


My Hero Academia : N E X T - season 1

by The_Struggling_Writer



Category: Boku no Hero Academia, My Hero Academia
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Original Character(s), Other, loooots of original characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 53,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22053352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Struggling_Writer/pseuds/The_Struggling_Writer
Summary: Set imminently after Izuku Midoriya's class's, the world has Endeavor as the number one hero and symbol of peace. The League of Villains still at large and have gained more power than before, threatening society and it's ever so fragile peace.But while all this was happening, the new generation of heroes is being introduced into UA, New villains rise alongside the League, New heroes rise to fight them. But will they be enough?The story of Hikari Hirakata, a student with a reputation of being a Delinquent with an addiction to fighting, wants to become a hero for the purpose of finding a good thrill every so often. But this sort of reckless reasoning is put to the test instantly as more and more is thrown at him. His best friend also wanting to become a Hero despite his own overprotective protests, another mystery student with an agenda against him specifically, and even a villain attack on top of the troubles.
Kudos: 1





	1. Episode 1 - DELINQUENTS

The weather in Shibuya was supposed to be pleasantly cloudy and humid, with the sun shining through. Unfortunately, what everyone got instead was heavy rain and mild thunder rumbling in the distance.  
Hikari "Blizz" Hikarataka slouched over the entrance of the school, cold air blasting his face and past his black tracksuit that had blue patches on his bicep, as well as a small lightning bolt emblem on the right side. His backpack was slung over his shoulder, waiting ever so patiently.  
As he glared into the rain, commanding it to stop raining with his eyes, he felt people staring and whispering as to why he was there at all. School had been dismissed fifteen minutes ago.  
He glared at whatever few people were still around, all of whom turned their heads quickly avoiding his eyes..  
He turned back to his predicament and stuck out his hand bit into the rain. Instantly, his hand sparked with pain and he pulled it right back, flinging off water in a blur of lightning.  
[Quirk - Supercharged: His body generates electrical energy that he can use for running at superhuman speeds. In addition to this, he can absorb any and all electricity on contact with his skin In addition, his body is essentially an open circuit so contact with too much water and he's dead]  
“Just great,” Hikari mumbled, kicking himself for not bringing a backup umbrella in his backpack.  
"Yooo." He turned to see a girl with purple hair grown all the way down her back to her waist with a single white patch gelled down to hide the left side of her face, while the right side was gelled back, showing off an incredibly pale and baggy purple eye. Her sweater was two sizes too large and her rain boots were soaked from playing in a puddle. Her fingers, colored gray with black line patterns running down them as she held up her umbrella.  
"yo Blizz," Kin Shizuma waved her umbrella as a hello, "Finally got here."  
"I can tell.”  
“You sent a text telling me it’s an emergency while I was watching Fist of the South Star. It was just getting good too.” Kin glared annoyed at having to be removed from the safety of her basement. Still, Hikari couldn’t quite believe she was outside. She was homeschooled almost all her life and made an effort to stay inside her basement to watch anime and play games whenever she could. Hell he first met her by crawling through her basement window to escape a nasty fight. It worked and well, here they were almost seven years later.  
“Remind me why you can’t just run home like, instantly?” she asked, knowing full well the speed he was capable of.  
"It'll hurt like hell," he stated, as a matter of factly, staring at the rain with bated annoyance simmering underneath. "seeing as how I don't have an umbrella or a poncho of sorts."  
He sighed in defeat at his one ultimate enemy. Water.  
Kin rolled her eye. He knew as much as she did that he could take off his jacket and just slap away all the water in front of him provided he didn't stop running or swinging his jacket like a maniac.  
He looked at her pleadingly, puppy eyed and all, leading to her she sigh of defeat.  
"Blizz, Well you already got me out here anyways so might as well help.," she said, slightly annoyed, set down her umbrella for a second to reach into and rumble through her pockets. She pulled out a sizable phone and tapped away into the search bar.  
She found what she was done typing, she shimmied her hand out of the sleeves of her jacket and put it into her tablet, her entire arm up to her elbow dipping into the screen.  
[Quirk - Deep Web: She can reach into images, most preferably online images, and pull out items in that picture and those items will function as they would normally. Case in point, umbrellas.]  
She fished around in the screen before producing a small umbrella, tightly held in her gray lined colored hands.  
She handed it to him and he gratefully accepted, thanking, "I owe ya one."  
"one?" She asked with contempt, "you made me come outside during a rainstorm. This counts as at least five favors."  
"”Five favors?”  
“Not enough? You’re right, Ten favors.”  
“Three.”  
“You can’t haggle how many favors you owe.”  
“Fine. Five favors,” Hikari fumbled with the bright pink umbrella, untying the strap and unfurled it open.  
Kin walked ahead of him and into the rain before he say anything else. Hikari noted she seemed tense, like she wanted to get up and away as fast as possible. Which wasn’t too unusual as she did want to get back to her basement as soon as possible. But still, something about it made it seem more than just wanting to get back inside.  
Hikari walked up beside her, leaning and asking concerned, “You good Kin?”  
Kin flashed a smile and a thumbs up. “Yeah yeah, I am. Blizz! Just . . a bit eager to get home,” she phrased cautiously, “You pulled me out of Fist of the South Star so I really just wanna finish that episode before I do some commissions and call it a day! So I just wanna-”  
“Need me to give you a run home?”  
“NO!” Kin exclaimed before quickly saying, “It’s gonna be slippery so not today? I’d rather not have you be at more risk of sliding and dying cause all that water.”  
Hikari glanced around unable to argue with that rationale. “If you say so,” he said, resigned and patting her head, “Have fun with that anime. Be careful crossing the street. . . . don’t use your phone when walking-”  
“Blizz, I'm gonna be fine!” She groaned miffed. “I’m capable of handling myself!”  
“Bu-”  
“No butts or coconuts today,” Kin said sternly while slapping Hikari’s back, “You’re way too protective of me Blizz. Like some sorta clingy boyfriend.”  
Hikari glanced down, but before he could apologize Kin slapped his back some more, “Gimme some credit, the school year is almost over. Trust me, I'm just walkin home. Just straight home.”  
Hikari inhaled but really couldn't find any other reason to worry about Kin aside from the glaringly obvious which was, up until this year, Kin was homeschooled and exclusively lived in her basement on a diet of chips and a variety of other vastly unhealthy foods to constantly eat.  
Kin hummed with victory as Hikari turned his attention back to the rain. Slippery streets wouldn't make for a good clean run. More chances than he'd like to slip, and get exposed to the elements. Sadly, he was gonna need to go a little slower.  
He sighed and the world slowed to a crawl. Raindrops were suddenly inching their way down to earth, everybody’s walks slowed to crawls, and everything went silent, except for the crackling of the electricity escaping his skin with every twitch of a muscle.  
He angled the umbrella in front of himself, splattering water droplets in slow motion, then sprinted out of the school, whizzing past Kin and other students, following with cold tailwind snatched away their umbrellas.  
Kin held onto her umbrella and had a tiny chuckle. There Blizz went again, ignoring the Quirk laws and speeding around wherever he needed and wanted. She worried one of these days he'd've gotten caught for it, but the police haven't been able to catch him at least. Well, normally they wouldn't.  
It took hikari about half a minute of real time to sprint through the streets, avoiding large puddles and cars driving on their way home.  
He skidded to a stop before cafe named Tetine. A neighboring coffee shop some blocks away, just teetering on the edge of what his mom considered “encroaching on their turf” and comfortably far enough for business.  
He entered the minimalistic shop which normally would have the color of bright plump oranges all over the walls on a good day, but the rainfall made it numbed down to a more somber traffic cone. The familiar and heavy smell of coffee filled his nose as he looked upon the almost empty seating of couches and booths.  
The curly blonde haired cashier on his phone looked up and scrambled to put it away and look at least semi professional. But once he saw that it was Hikari who walked in, he stopped and relaxed some.  
"Oh! Hikari," Jima Park straightened himself up, his lazy blue eyes looked past Hikari and at the rain outside, "Didn't think you'd be coming over seeing as it's raining and all."  
"I kinda really need a break from my family for a little. Mind if I hang for a little?" Jima was reliable to talk to whenever he needed. Ever since he accidentally started a gang, Jima was the gang’s rock. Anyone could talk to him about anything and he’ll lend an ear or advice if he wanted.  
Jima opened up the counter and invited him through the back door.  
Hikari followed through the doorway, taking off his shoes and setting his bag down in the hallway. They went further down the hallway and into his room, which was complete with neat piles of study books, beanbags, a computer, and a messy bed. A much cleaner living space in comparison to Hikari's own.  
Jima went to the game console by the computer, turning it on and gestured to the beanbag, "Go ahead. Take a seat. I'll go get some tea while we boot something up."  
Hikari practically fell into the beanbag with a heavy thwomp. Another ragging day of school and his parents. His grade report had been mailed home the other day and while he got passing marks, his parents once again compared him to his brother. Their "Golden can do no wrong child."  
He had to put up with that for over 10 years. one of these days, he was going to have had enough. Least his brother is a lot more sympathetic though. Usually they confide each other to their worries. His brother always having to work hard to meet the expectations of their father stressed him out as much as it did for him.  
Jima came back with two cups of tea on a wooden platter. He set it down on his bed and tossed his apron to the side, grimacing at the blue screen of updating displayed on his monitor.  
"You on your break?" Hikari asked worriedly. The cafe was still open after all.  
Jima shook his head, raising a hand to explain, "There's not a whole lotta people anyways. Only old Shunji. He'll call when he's ready to pay."  
Hikari slumped in relief and accepted the still steaming tea. He sipped it a little as Jima took his seat on the bed across the beanbag.  
"So. Lay it on me," Jima said, taking his own cup and sipping it as well, "What's been bothering you today?"  
"Family problems. As usual," Hikari said nonchalantly. "Grades are passing but it doesnt seem good enough for them.”  
"hmm. Hikari, your grades are passing at a minimum. You dont change that and your dad isnt going to be happy. But I sense that you have more than just grades on your mind," Jima wisely said, blowing on his tea after sipping it too quickly. "You haven’t cared about grades for a long long while. What else is happening?"  
Hikari blew a raspberry. ". . . . I told them I want to go for UA."  
Jima nodded and gestured to continue. His parent’s judgement of Hikari was pretty set in stone as a “Delinquent who wouldn’t help society in any way,” along with a side of “he’s too immature and selfish to be a hero.”  
"And well-." Hikari hesitated, to which Jima’s eyes glowed teal.  
"Take as much time as you need to get your thoughts in order."  
[Jima Park: Quirk - Tranquil Gaze - Whoever Jima’s eyes look at feel calmed no matter what. Helpful for relieving worries. Momentarily anyways]  
Hikari’s hesitation melted away, and he stared at his swirling tea, “They’re not real . . . supportive of it? If that’s the phrase for it.”  
Jima took a sip saying, "I don't see why they wouldn't. It's a step up from your current activities."  
Hikari shot Jima a look, "Just saying. They should be happy that you're not gonna 'Turn into a villain' like they'd predicted."  
"Well, they're afraid that I won't be able to pass or whatever," Hikari said honestly, starting to ignore his tea and ramble, "It's like you said. They're happy that I'm turning into a villain since Im applying for hero course. They're not saying it but the way they talk about it whenever they bring it up is just. . . . It's almost like they're waiting for me to screw this up somehow. Waiting for me to fail to say, 'I told you so.' IT's just so-"  
"Maybe you're overthinking it."  
Hikari stopped midway and snapped his head at Jima, "What?"  
Jima calmly took a gulp of his tea and set it down, saying, "You're overthinking this. Again."  
HIkari tilted his head, so Jima explained, "Hikari, You've made several attempts to make a power play to appease your parents, yet every time you did, it usually failed to please them, namely your dad. You keep thinking back around about how it’ll come back to bite you."  
Jima swished what was left of his tea in his cup and downed the last bits. "If heroing is something you want to do. Then stop worrying about how it'll affect your parents."  
Hikari stared at Jima in surprise, even though he had always given advice as sound as this before. Even so, Jima’s well of good advice always stunned him  
Jima cracked a smile as his console booted up and the start menu displayed, "And if your next concern is that you’ll get lonely, don't be, Kin’s gonna be right there next to ya."  
"Well if I felt lonely I could just run ba-," Hikari stopped sipping his tea and darted his eyes right at Jima's in sudden curious simmered down anger, "Kin’s gonna be right next to me?"  
"Oh? Kin didn't tell you? She-"suddenly, Hikari's phone buzzed with his ringtone blared muffled through his pocket, cutting off the conversation before it could escalate.  
After some fishing around his pocket, he brought it up to his face with the name, Kozat and his mood was enlightened. Kozato was another member of his gang along with Jima, and technically Kin. But unlike Jima, Kozat was more prone to getting angry fast and that would always lead to fights.  
He accepted the call, unable to hide his annoyance, "Kozat If this is another fight I swear to-"  
"nonono!" Koz's gravelly voice rang out instantly, "It's not that! I swear!"  
Hikari breathed a silent sigh of relief and asked much calmer, "Why are you calling then?"  
Kozato panted, "Well boss. I uh- well. There was fight."  
"koz-"  
"Hey! I didn't start it and Im not fighting!"  
Hikari glanced at Jima who was just as confounded and shrugged. "Well. Explain then."  
"WELL. You see, it's the new kid. I forget her name."  
"Onaka?" Onaka having been the most recent member to join his delinquent gang, and also the first person to actually just walk up to him and ask to join. He liked her straightforwardness and besides, wasn’t like he had a cap on how many friends he could have.  
HIkari immediately asked, “What happened?"  
Despite onaka joining only two weeks ago, she has had multiple instances where she'd done a number of reckless things and some of which actually were life-threatening. such as attempting to eat a car with her quirk, lightning fireworks in her mouth, and most of all, accidently picking fights with people three times her size.  
Kozato whispered on his end of the line, "well. See boss, she found some shady guys around our turf. I was nearby helping my sister with moving her stuff since she got a new place. Her apartment is kinda cramped so I've been helping her with jobs and whatno-"  
"Hey, Kozat. Back to Onaka. What happened."  
"Right," Kozat took a breath before saying, "She might have gotten into some big trouble."  
"Big how-" Hikari pinched the bridge of his nose some more, "-Are you close to where Onaka is?"  
"yea-"  
"Where?"  
"Downtown, by the old hango-"  
The world slowed to a crawl as he stood and sprinted straight out of the room, out of the cafe, and onto the street, where he was given a reminder that it was still raining. He ignored the stinging rain the best he could as he raced through the streets again, turning corners and jumping cars until he skidded to a stop under an awning across the street from an abandoned building.  
He eyed the building, seeing the usual lack of activity on the outside. But somebody messed with his gang, that just doesn't slide with him.  
"Boss! over here!" Kozat shouted quietly, his rust colored hair and familiarly scarred face popping out from behind a car he squatted behind.  
Hikari zipped over and squatting down next to him. "Kozat. What happened?"  
He took a glance over the car, "Well I kinda saw few people dragging Onaka in. I got no clue what's happening but I haven't heard anything since."  
Hikari glanced at the lot again, his eyes sparked as he looked at all the windows of the building for signs of life, but surprising nobody, found none. The fact that Onaka wasn't already screaming loud enough for him to hear it across the street was already a bad sign. His thoughts were interrupted when Kozato asked, "So boss. What's the plan? we go in guns blazing or sneak a bit?"  
"Tell Hisoo that I won't make it to our date," Hikari said firmly. Hisoo Tama, Hikari's current girlfriend of a month or two now. They had been planning to go to an amusement park for a week or so and Hisoo had really been looking forward to it. Sadly, he was gonna have to cancel plans, again. He could already imagine her annoyance but this took priority over that date. There could always be another one.  
Kazot started typing away at his phone as Hikari added, "And the plan? You stay on the lookout out here while I go in."  
"Hold o-"  
Kozat barely had time to blink before Hikari ran past and into the building, the sparks from his lightning fading quickly inside.  
Hikari zoomed around the building, memories of past hangouts being held here with his friends surfaced, smacking him with a strange sense of nostalgia. Everybody decided that staying inside of a big abandoned lot was a bit weird for everyone and kinda inconvenient since it was toward the outside of town. Which was why they opted for Jima’s cafe as a good meetup. Though the reason that they didn't choose Hikari’s cafe was that it was a bit cramped with there being five people living there.  
Hikari skidded to a stop when he approached toward the back end of the second floor. A new and large array of dividers and lights were arranged across the floor. Pushing those aside, he saw rows and rows of tables, occupied with at least four people arranging what seemed to be giant packs of white powder, small canisters of liquid and various other increasingly illegal items. Obviously, Hikari could guess what was going on. Somebody was moving drugs into his neighborhood and kidnapped Onaka for some reason.  
None of them really paid any mind to Hikari as he cautiously skimmed the edges of the various tables. They were more focused on the drug-work but as he walked past and further into the floor, most tables were empty with nobody sorting any sort of packages.  
They had just recently moved in so at the very least, this means they hadn't set up base completely.  
He brought out his phone and briskly hid behind one of the dividers. He texted to Kozat to call the police.  
He barely hit send on the message when a loud clattering and muffled shouts caught his attention. Time slowed down again and he ran in the direction of the noise.  
He ran over, pushing aside the numerous dividers to find Onaka, her mouth duct taped and taped to a chair, with the chair on her side. Her dirty blonde hair and black pink stripes were in slow motion free fall. Her white and pink punk jacket was dirty and torn from whatever struggle she was in before she was duct taped. He zoomed around her to make sure that she had no injuries but all he found was a few scrapes and a particularly nasty bruise on her head. Along with the giant gaping mouth on her stomach.  
[Quirk - Stomach Mouth: She has a mouth on her stomach that lives and breaths. It got teeth, acidic saliva and sometimes has a mind of its own. It’s name is puku!]  
Time begun resuming to normal as he dropped out of his quirk and Onaka looked up at him wildly.  
She started shouting but seemed to forget about the tape on the mouth.  
Hikari knelt down and ripped the tape off her mouth, to which she shouted, “Hikari! I'm so glad to see ya-”  
“So what’s the story? Kozat kinda said you got hit on the back of the head.”  
Onaka tilted her head around a bit, “Well, I do feel something wet on the back of my head butI cant tell if it hurts or not. And I think that’s bad.”  
Onaka’s stomach mouth grumbled in agreement.  
“Alright,” Hikari went to work at the ropes.”Did ya see any of the guys who hit you?”  
“I don’t- . . I can’t remember, everything’s fuzzy,” she complained, wincing as the pain from her head injury started kicking in. “I do know it was a pretty big gu- LOOK OUT!”  
Time slowed to a crawl and he instantly turned to see a solid red beam heading straight for him at an alarming pace, even in his slowed time.  
He kicked Onaka’s chair away as quickly as he could and jumped back in the same instance as the beam screamed past him and burnt a hole into the wall behind him.  
He turned to the source of the laser and saw another beam coming straight for him in that instant. He ducked around that beam and started sprinting along the beam.  
The person firing the beams were wearing a sort of red glasses as they were extending their hands to blast a beam of red from his hands. The rest of his clothes was a black punk jacket and tight fitting jeans.  
Hikari ran directly behind him and started winding up for a high kick aimed right at his head. He didn't notice and still was focused on where Hikari was.  
He executed on it, his right leg swinging high up and arcing right at the back of his head, only to get slammed by something behind him right before he made contact.  
Hikari launched out of his world of time dilation and flew straight into a few dividers tumbling to a stop. Electricity sparked from his back and arm as he winced in pain.  
His eyes darted back up to see a giant gray dry skinned fist twice the size of his head coming straight at him.  
He backed up from the fist as it closed the distance at an alarming rate and slammed into the ground, shaking the floor. Hikari felt every one of those vibrations rattle the ground and he backed up even more.  
Once he backed up properly he got a good glimpse at the big guy. He had a giant elephant head with a human body that was just rippling with muscle. He towered over Hikari with a giant wall of solid muscle with arms looking like giant gray semi-wrinkled logs. His head had two small angry beady eyes, a massive swaying trunk accompanied with two giant tusks.  
He dropped his quirk for a split second, “I feel like we got off the wrong foot guys. Why don't we all take a nice breather and relax-” Hikari dashed forwards, adrenaline starting to kick himself into overdrive.  
He ducked into the elephant’s guard, his arm still extended outwards, and kicked himself off the ground and slamming the same foot into the elephant’s eye.  
The elephant reeled in pain and was thrown back from the strike, but in the next half second that passed, he landed on one leg and swiveled with the momentum and shot out his foot right into the Elephant’s gut.  
He drew back his leg and jumped back to avoid another laser and ran behind a pillar taking cover from the laser barrage. His legs were hurting from the bone and his back was aching with a stabbing pain from the earlier hit. As fast as Hikari was, faster healing wasn't one of his quirks much to his annoyance. Neither was shock absorption. Every hit he did at superspeed would have a chance of his bones breaking. Even he could only take so much impact. But despite himself, he was grinning like crazy.  
These guys clearly weren't interested in letting him leave, and he wasn’t interested in leaving them conscious.  
Hikari dashed out from cover to circling the elephant, jumping onto his arm when he slammed his fist at Hikari. He darted up his arm and slammed his foot into the elephant’s other eye.  
He jumped off the elephant, dodging a lumbering swing that slammed into a pillar nearby, spraying concrete dust and shards everywhere.  
Hikari ran at laser hands, who was blasting a fresh beam directly at him. Hikari dropped, sliding under the laser and swept him off his feet.  
As he spun suspended in the air, Hikari righted himself back up to his feet, and axe kicked him right into the floor.  
Hikari relished in the blows he just landed but then suddenly remembered the spray of concrete shards. And the actual giant chunks of concrete flying right at Onaka, who was still bound to the chair.  
His eyes widened in panic as the rain of concrete was almost on top of her. He bolted to her cursing himself for not noticing sooner..  
He ran at full tilt and scooped Onaka’s chair by the backrest, violently dragging the chair in his direction. But suddenly felt his foot sear in pain. A red laser shot indiscriminately as laser hands was falling got lucky.  
Hikari silenced his scream before it could come out of his throat and tumbled behind some of the dividers still standing. Onaka tumbled along with him into the dividers and skidded to a stop.  
“Hikari!” she shouted, “Your fuckin leg!”  
Hikari turned over to his back and raised his left foot from the ankle down was in fact burnt. His shoe was incinerated from one side, patches blackened and crumbling. His socks were seared into his ankle with patches unfortunately showing off some of his ankle red and raw.  
He crawled on his back to Onaka’s chair, which had landed on it’s back.  
He got to work with freeing her hands but she was muttering something about this somehow being her fault.  
“Onaka, you got nothing to be sorry about,” Hikari told her, electricity springing from his fingers and searing the duct tape away from one of her wrists.  
“It really feels like it is since the reason you’re here and got messed up is because of me!”  
“That’s a coincidence,” He joked, ignoring the fact that his leg was in fact possibly charred far worse than he knew.  
“Listen Onaka, You didn’t mess up at ALL. Seriously,” Hikari affirmed, putting his hand on her shoulder and looking her directly in the eye, “They’re the ones who knocked the back of your head and dragged you off. Don’t blame yourself for things that happen that are out of your control.”  
In the hushed silence that followed, the two of them suddenly noticed their two assailants talking quite loudly..  
A deep bass heavy voice boomed, “idiot, you’re going to hit the merchandise!”  
Another voice, reedy and croaking, argued back, “Then why don't you hurry up and go get them! If he comes back to this mess we’re in for big trouble!”  
A gruff roar and the ground floor started shaking with elephant’s approaching footsteps.  
Hikari ran out of cover but his charred foot gave out on his second stride, resulting in throwing himself across the floor. He skidded across the floor and rolled to a stop, his left foot now scraped and bleeding badly.  
He shuffled himself upright to see Elephant and laser mask were staring at him in a mix of disbelief and surprise at their luck. Hikari felt his face grow hot and embarrassed despite his predicament.  
A new voice rang out, “I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I saw that text saying you were in trouble, I didn't expect to see that.”  
Hikari suddenly noticed the new arrival and saw that he was clad in a black jacket and had brown hair that swirled down like a reverse whirlpool. From the distance that Hikari was at, it looked like the dude had mellowed deep blue eyes that seemed oddly familiar which served to slowly grow anger for that reason.  
He waved his hands timidly, apologizing, “Sorry about this Hikari, you weren’t supposed to be here or see all this. Heck, your little friend wasn’t either. Well not yet at least”  
Hikari pushed himself up and shuddered in a rout of pain as he did. “Well. You shouldn’t be here either. With your drugs and shit I mean. And the fact that this is private property.”  
He was about to say something but halted instantly when he saw Hikari’s left foot. He turned back to the laser guy and asked almost quietly, “Misa . . . did you hit him with the laser?”  
Misa nodded carefully to which the brown haired man suddenly exploded, “You ABSOLUTE FOOL! How am I supposed to change his memory and not expect him to question how he had gotten that burn? You TRASH!”  
Misa looked down in shame, or at least his mask did. But whirlpool turned right around and pointed at the elephant shouting, “and YOU Oshima! I seem to recall that you’re the one who even brought that gremlin here!”  
“I-”  
“Do you realize how much this will set us back? Weeks and WEEKS we have been slowly shipping this stuff in and it’s all ruined in one day because you buffoons couldn't hold yourselves accountable!”  
“Hey hey hey!” Hikari shouted in response, unable to stay quiet at the person’s berreting of his friends, even if he was the bad guy here. “You could go a little lighter on shouting at your friends man.”  
“Hm?” he turned as if he just remembered Hikari was still there, “oh sorry, I didn't introduce them to you.”  
Before Hikari could even attempt to say anything, whirlpool hair pointed respectively, “This is Misa, he’s a bit quiet but he gets loud pretty fast. His quirk is shooting a laser beam from his hands that work effectively in hurting people. The brute is Oshima. He’s an elephant . . . . not much else other than that to be honest. Tough as nails and strong as hell. Although you went around that tough bit and just aimed for the eyes.”  
He pointed both his hands to himself in some sort of grand gesture, announcing, “and I am Shishido. Im this little group’s leader. And seeing as how you disrupted this operation, You're Not leaving here intact.”  
“Well thanks for the names, now I know who you are so I can report you all to the police,” Hikari explained, almost rolling his eyes, “Right after I beat you guys to a pulp that is.”  
Shishido smirked and wagged his fingers, “nuh-uh-uh. You won't remember any of this. Neither will your friend in that case.“  
Hikari’s eyes widened in confusion and Shishido explained, “You see Hikari, My quirk is that I can alter anybody’s memories that I come into physical contact with. So you’re not gonna remember any of this. But I’m not sure how to actually how to say that you hurt your leg that badly MISA.”  
Hikari gritted his teeth and hobbled in place, bouncing his left foot up and down, wincing every time he did.  
Shishido chuckled in amusement, “What’s wrong Hikari? Has the ‘lightning bolt’ of Shibuya been defeated? Please do tell me that I'm correct in saying so.”  
Hikari glared at Shishido, getting more and more annoyed at his odd familiarity and the fact he couldn’t place where he looked so familiar. Lightning began to spark up more and more frequently from his movements, and he watched as their eyes widened in slow uncertainty.  
“Ya know something?” Hikari asked hopping in place on his right foot and delicately dangling his foot just above the ground as he did. “I think I’d better start taking this a bit more seriously now.”  
“Im . . sorry?” Shishido looked back and forth between Oshima and Misa, disappointed that they were just as lost as he was.  
“My own quirk? It makes me stupidly fast but comes with the cost of a serious health hazard,” Hikari explained hopping still and glaring between the three of his enemies, “If I go full throttle then that means I could be hospitalized.”  
“And what does this have to do with our little-” and Shishido went flying back, tumbling across the ground like a ball and skidding to a stop. A trail of dust and lightning had vanished to Hikari’s new position which was standing where Shishido was a mere half-second earlier.  
“Now that?” Hikari shook his fist which throbbed slightly from his sudden speed boosted punch, “was about like, 40% of my all.”  
Oshima and Misa stepped back when they met Hikari’s glare, but he wasn’t quite sure how much of his little display of power was a bluff. His left foot was screaming in angry aching pains with a side of numbness. The bleeding hasn't stopped and he didn't think he could attempt to stop it with thing one and two still standing. So his choices boiled down to running off and hope the cops get here in time or knock their lights out like what he did to Shishido. The second option was much more appealing.  
Oshima trumpeted and stampeded at Hikari, who couldn’t help but grin more. He had to give it to the elephant man, he understood the situation better than he had thought he would.  
But before they would clash, a hauntingly familiar voice shouted, “Nobody is doing ANYTHING!”  
Hikari turned to the voice with involuntary spark of lightning, this time a blend of green and red. Confusion and anger. Kozat stood stiffly with his arm twisted around his back and a box cutter right under his jugular. The one holding the knife was a girl with long smooth brown hair that ran down past her shoulders, and a cute squishy face to boot that peeked out from behind Kozat’s shoulder. She wore a blue blouse modestly draped with a shorter floral patterned jacket and her face was contorted with more annoyance and anger than Hikari ever saw her with.  
“Hisoo?”  
His girlfriend smiled as if the situation was all a prank, while inching the knife closer to Kozat’s throat, “As I said babe. Nobody does ANYTHING.”  
Hikari narrowed his brows and more red lightning sparked from his body, “Hisoo. What the hell is this?”  
She paid no mind to him, barking at Misa and Oshima, “HEY! BRAINDEAD IDIOTS! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO DOING? I TOLD YOU HIS QUIRK AND YOU LET HIM MUCK EVERYTHING UP THIS MUCH?”  
Kozat seemed more fed up with the situation and looked to Hikari for some kind of sign as to what to do.  
“OI, Quit ignoring me!” Hikari bellowed, taking a step forward.  
In return, Hisoo’s knife got even closer to Kozat’s throat, drawing a drop of blood as she threatened, “Not another step babe. Or your little gang will have a spot to fill.”  
Hikari sparked more red lightning, screaming, “I want to know what the hell you’re doing here and why you have a knife to Kozat’s throat!”  
Hisoo sighed, rolling her eyes while explaining, “Obviously Hikari. Im holding Kozato here hostage. Also just as obviously, I'm working with these idiots.”  
Red lightning only sparked more and more as she continued on, “So the original plan was supposed to be, ‘move the drugs in slowly. Start small and work your way into the community.’ Then you came into the equation and we had to take extra careful steps. After all, your reputation was that once you caught wind of anything, you took care of it personally before reporting it. My job was to be your girlfriend to get any information on you and your little gang’s quirks so we could get people to handle you when we needed to. Clearly, that didn't go as planned as you’re a bit too early. Not everybody assembled and you just had to knock out my brother.”  
Hikari glared Hisoo and asked sparingly, “Then all that time we spent together. It was all just to get at me?”  
Hisoo’s face softened up and turned downwards. “Well . . . no. Not all of it.”  
Hikari’s glare softened up for a split second when she suddenly turned her gaze back up and started screaming condescendingly, “In fact, most of that time we spent felt something like torture. You’re just an idiot who never had enough of your mom or dad’s affection so you decided to be rebellious! You call yourself a delinquent and a ‘hardliner’ but the only thing that’s hardlining about you is your ability to complain about anything and everything in your life!”  
Hikari’s lightning stopped sparking and he just kept glaring in silence. Almost wishing that looks would be able to kill, but alas, that wasn’t his quirk. Their audience of Oshima, Misa, and Kozat awkwardly stared at each other and now more than ever, wanted to be anywhere else other than the center of Hikari and Hisoo’s relationship issues bursting open.  
“I think that’s enough of that now. Oshima, Misa, grab him and wake Shishi up.”  
And that’s when Onaka came from behind a pillar, screaming a warcry, slamming the back of Hisoo’s head with a chair.  
Kozat followed right up with his own quirk, sending Hisoo flying back with a flick of his wrist, which ended up almost slamming Hisoo into Onaka on her way out.  
[Quirk - Gravity Center: Kozat’s hands can change the center of gravity for anything within 30 feet of him. He can make people or himself walk on ceilings, walls, and whatever else! Affects a small area or all 30 feet of his control]  
As Onaka shouted at Kozat for almost hitting her, Oshima was quickly reaching out to grab Hikari but was jerked to a stop by six white pale alien arms attached to a skinny humanoid floating above the ground with its legs perched on the air. It’s smooth crowned head had two gray eyeballs with white dots serving as it’s irises glaring right at Oshima and a third eye on its forehead looking at Hikari.  
“Hey Hikari!” Sawa exclaimed, standing between Hikari and his Personi, “Kozat called us earlier. Sorry we couldn’t arrive any sooner!”  
[Quirk - Personi: Sawa can control a spectral being that reacts on instinct and it’s abilities are bound to emotions. Absolutely cannot move beyond 2 meters. Where Sawa goes, the Personi goes and vice versa. Is normally incredibly durable and physically strong]  
The personi swung Oshima back and away from Hikari and in the next minute, swapping over in front of Hikari to split Misa’s laser with all 6 of it’s arms. Sawa covered his eyes from the sheer blinding red despite his hair always hanging in front of his face like a curtain.  
Kozat on the other side of the room raised his arm and Misa flew up to the roof in response.  
“Heads up Hikari!” Kozat shouted as he shoved forward a green haired boy who was protesting his sudden launch to Hikari.  
Isobe crashed to the ground but rolled back up smoothly, grabbing Hikari’s hand while brushing his neon green hair to his right eye, “Hey Hik. Sorry we’re late!”  
“I don't quite remember calling any of you guys here. I had it handled,” Hikari argued as the pain in his foot started to fade away.  
[High Sweats - Isobe sweats out a morphine type medicine that is absorbed through the skin. Takes effect almost instantly. Side effects on the user include occasional nausea, reduced lung functions, and mild sensation of being high]  
Hikari bounced on his toes for a hot second before angrily shouting across the room, ”Kozat I said to call the COPS!”  
“He thought they wouldn’t get here in time,” Isobe explained, massaging Hikari’s hands with his sweat, “So he texted all of us first just in case. Sawa and I were in the neighborhood-”  
“We can’t be pulling this stuff-”  
“We’ll get this handled way faster than the cops can!” Sawa shouted, watching as Kozat kept bouncing Misa from the ground and the roof.  
“Ok,that’s not the issue idiots!”  
“Wait you guys did this regularly?” Onaka inquired, looking up at all of them in a newfound light of wonder, “You guys gotta tell me all about that.”  
“LOOK OUT!”  
Oshima rose from the ground, and was instantly swinging his fist at Hikari.  
Sawa jumped in the way, him and Personi getting slammed through a pillar.  
“SAWA!” Hikari roared, turning in anger at Oshima, who was aiming his second swing at Hikari but he easily sidestepped it, commenting, “Ya know, I’m a bit angry right now so sorry if I go a bit overboard.”  
Oshima didn’t make any sound and just swung his fist again. It quickly came to a halt as Hikari dropped into bolt time.  
He dodged the fist easily, unleashing a salvo of fists on Oshima’s chest, until his knuckles began to ache and burn.  
After he finished that attack set, he grabbed a hold of Isobe’s arm and sprinting away with him, placing him down next behind the pillar Sawa had crashed through, before sprinting away back to Oshima for his second wave.  
He ran full sprint and jump kicked Oshima dead on chest, kicking himself into a flip off his chest, then ending it off with a jumping uppercut to the jaw.  
Time resumed it’s normal pacing, Oshima stumbled back onto one foot, teetering on his heel but slammed his foot to the ground, bellowing, “I expected more from the Bolt of Shibuya!”  
“Well I'm expecting more from you wonder twins and Im honestly disappointed.”  
Another angry trumpet and another big flurry of fists that Hikari easily dodged. While dodging, he saw Misa, who was getting casually slammed up and down onto the ground thanks to Kozat while Onaka watched on beside him as if this were some kinda strange spectacle. But Misa’s hands were starting to glow bright.  
Hikari instantly sprinted to him just barely slowing down off balance because of Kozat shifting the gravity down, but adjusted easily. But, Misa’s hand had already blasted off a beam that shot forwards alarmingly fast right at Kozat and Onaka, too slow to react to the laser approaching them.  
Hikari wrenched Misa’s hand away and corrected his aim to Oshima before racing against Misa’s laser.  
He blazed past, quickly grabbing Kozat and Onaka and dropping the both of them off next to Isobe.  
Slowed time ended as exhaustion caught up with his body, His heart boomed in his head as adrenaline pulsed through his body, his arms shaking excitedly. He exhaled into an unintentional laugh at how much fun he was having. It had been a while since his last fix of fighting that was actually enough to get his adrenaline going, but as much as he wanted to keep his rush going, he knew he had to cut off his fun.  
Kozat, Onaka, and Isobe looked around in a daze, the three of them having similar reactions to being hurtled across a room then suddenly jerking to a stop, which is to say, on the verge of hurling whatever they had for lunch.  
“Hikari?” Kozat gasped, holding his stomach down, “A bit of a warning next time please?”  
“I’m ending it,” He said sadly, “Go get Sawa please!”  
“Wait-” Time slowed again and he walked back out to survey the scene once again. Oshima was recoiling from being shot in the face with Misa’s laser. Misa was slowly getting up from the ground, Shinshio was still out on the ground, and he trusted that he would stay down.  
First things first, Misa had to go down first. So long as there was supporting fire, taking care of Oshima was going to be more and more difficult, and he’d be the easiest to take care of at the moment.  
The temperature suddenly dropped all around Hikari. He turned in alarm and saw a bubble of water forming from the air surrounding him and closing out his only way out.  
His thoughts were plunged into fear, blindly running forwards and broke through the water ball, tumbling out, screaming in pain. His body felt as if he just jumped through a wall of acid and lightning arced off his body in pain despite the painkilling sweat from Isobe.  
He saw the ball of water fall apart and Hisoo’s face from behind it, contorted with rage, reminding him of her quirk.  
[Orbee - Hisoo can make balls of water that vary in size in an area around her so long as it's within line of sight. The maximum amount of bubbles is 5]  
“She’s still up!”  
“Yeah I CAN SEE KOZAT!” A red flash of light and Hikari kicked himself into a run and blazed past a blast of Misa’s laser beam.  
Before he could move to take out Misa, he found himself caught by Oshima’s hands and smashed right through a pillar.  
Hikari’s head swam from the twin impact, his vision blurring and threatening to black out at any moment. He tried to pry himself out of Oshima’s hands, but he held onto him like a vice.  
Someone shouted, “NO!” as Hikari’s vision faded back into consciousness to see Misa, hand raised and glowing in anticipation of finishing him off.  
“Hisoo, we should just be done with him now!” He shouted, “This plan of yours was never going to work!”  
“You idiot. We are supposed to do this quietly! If he suddenly dies, there’s going to be a whole investigation! Heroes will get involved!”  
“So what? We can handle a few heroes!”  
“They said if we’re going to do this, We’re not supposed to attract the attention of any local authorities yet!”  
“They’re going to die sooner or later, which is why we should take care of it NOW!”  
As the two of them bickered, Hikari still tried to wriggle himself out of Oshima’s vice grip to no avail. Any more lightning sparks would only serve to tighten Oshima’s grip, but superfast vibrations would probably do the trick to loosen the grip.  
But before he could get started on that plan, he was suddenly drenched by water, screaming in pain as the water burned at his skin and leached away his reserves of strength.  
“There. Now he can’t run willy nilly anymore,” Hisoo shouted at Misa, “Now will shut up and stay on the plan?”  
“HIKARI!” Sawa flew at Hikari with Personi, winding up for a punch only to get shot out of the air by crimson laser. He hit the ground but his Personi lurched back up, exhaling aggressively, only to get blasted again.  
Personi didn’t go flying off this time, digging its heels into the ground, using all 6 of its arms to block the beam. Sawa was shaking his distortion off when his head was suddenly enveloped with a water bubble. Personi instantly turned, reaching an arm back to save Sawa, but Misa’s laser intensified, forcing personi’s attention back to the beam, which was growing much hotter and forceful by the second.  
“SAWA!” Isobe screamed, rushing out with Onaka running right along with him, while Kozat was turning his attention to Misa, aiming to launch him up the wrong side of gravity but another water bubble appeared all around the three of them and swirled to drown them too.  
Kozat thrust his hands out and the water bubble shuddered to a stop right before they were enveloped.  
The bubble expanded as Kozat roared, pushing back the water further but the water rubber banded back in despite this, even growing larger to compensate for Kozat’s resistance. Kozat grit his teeth but for all his effort, his air pocket shrunk further and further.  
Hikari writhed but Oshima’s vice grip didn’t budge. At this moment, his quirk had been rendered useless from all the water. And all he could do was watch Kozat struggle with Onaka and Isobe helplessly relying on him and Sawa drown helplessly.  
Hikari pushed at Oshima’s hands, his rage boiling out into a strangled scream, shouting profanity at Hisoo who seemingly just rolled her eyes.  
But that strangled cry was overshadowed by someone else’s scream drowning everything else out, reverberating off everything, echoing all around, drilling into everyone’s eardrums.  
Hikari fell to the ground as Oshima reared back grabbing his ears, adding to the choir of screaming but even he was drowned out. The laser fire sputtered to a stop and the water bubbles splashed down useless.  
Hikari dropped into bolt time, the noise vanished as the world froze.  
Every muscle in his body screamed in pain and protest, heart burning a hole in his chest as he ran up Oshima to launch his fist straight down on his skull.  
His body started burning more and more landed back down and bolted to Hisoo, swinging his foot like a hammer right into her stomach. The second he did, his quirk finally gave out and she was sent flying back to the ground.  
The scream’s volume came back in full volume but Hikari ignored that easily as his he felt his heart beating too fast. He had used too much electricity right after being drained, now his body seized up and his chest felt like it was going to cave in at any moment.  
Then a taser was jammed right into his back. His chest stopped burning instantly and he coughed his throat, taking labored breaths considerably easier.  
A series of loud punches with a single final warcry echoed, and Hikari saw Sawa, coughing up water and Personi, slamming it’s fists together and bellowing triumphantly over a knocked out Misa before fading away into Sawa.  
“Thanks Jo,” Hikari circled around to see Jo Juri stood triumphantly in a purple short jacket and red crop top, taser in hand and mouth to one side.  
She ruffled her blonde fire orange mohawk to the right side of her head. She gave a thumbs up, signing with her hands, “Sorry I was late. I rushed over as fast as I could on the bike.”  
“Can we not cut it that close again?” Kozat gasped out, collapsed on the floor, Isobe and Onaka lifting him up so he sat on a pillar, “My head hurts along with my everything.”  
Isobe slapped Kozat, who shook it off and looked much less pained.  
“Do you guys do this all the time?” Onaka asked, shoulders slumping down now that all the chaos was over.  
“We don't usually plan for it. Unless we find them first. Which happens a strangely huge amount of times.”  
“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Hikari said comfortingly, “You heard them, they were going to come after us with more people. If anything, this was actually good.”  
“Hikari,” Sawa grumbled, swinging his wet hair off his eyes, “Next time something like this happens, Don’t rush in alone. Cause this happens and people almost die.”  
Jo snapped for attention and signed, “technically only all you guys almost died. O-N-A-K-A and I-S-O-B-E almost died if it weren’t for Kozat.”  
“Look,” Hikari affirmed, “What matters is the result, and the result is that we’re all ok in the end. If not drenched. With the exception of Jo.”  
Everyone quieted up seemingly at least agreeing in silence about Hikari’s words of wisdom. Happy with this unanimous silent agreement, Hikari got himself up, “Well, we should probably get going. Anybody hurt badly?”  
“Pretty sure you’re the only one who got hurt the worst,” Isobe summed up, slapping Sawa’s back as he coughed up the rest of the water in his lungs, “Sawa almost drowned but he’ll be alright. And Kozato just needs some rest.”  
“I need more than just some rest Isobe.”  
“And Onaka just got some scrapes and bruises but she’ll be alright.”  
Hikari breathed more and more sighs of relief with Isobe’s diagnoses. But their attention was redirected at the quiet sounds of shuffling. Everyone collectively turned to the noise to see Hisoo, still conscious and desperately crawling away.  
Hikari sighed. He had really hoped not to deal with her, but there was no time like the present he supposed. So he limped over with his gang following behind.  
He stepped on her ankle, stopping her from crawling any further. “Sup ‘babe?’ Where ya going?”  
“This was supposed to be my chance,” she muttered, voice low with shock and disbelief, “A chance to move up and it’s all ruined.”  
She glared up at Hikari, croaking, “Well? What are you going to do to me?”  
Hikari ignored her, asking aloud, “There any rope to bind her? And while we’re at it, is there anything to even bind them? Can’t exactly just leave them here for the cops open handed.”  
“I think there’s something around here. I mean, they got tables of drugs and more stuff to keep producing,” Isobe piqued up, glancing around.  
“They got duct tape, that’s for sure,” Onaka excitedly pointed out, “Can I do the duct taping?”  
“Maybe leave it to us kid,” Sawa insisted, rummaging around, bringing personi back out to find the hidden duct tape stash.  
“Neat. If there’s not enough duct tape then we’ll figure something out.”  
“What on earth are you doing?” Hisoo asked, confused at their demeanor.  
“Finding shit to tie you up with.” Hikari responded casually, watching Sawa and Onaka bicker about duct tape privileges. “I don't like beating opponents when they’re down. I thought you would know me better seeing as how you’ve pretend dated me for three months.”  
Jo tapped Hikari’s shoulder, signing, “told you she was bad news. You never listen.”  
“Ok fine, you were right. happy?”  
Jo smirked in victory and glared down at Hisoo, who shrunk back from the intensity of the stare.  
“One more thing Hisoo,” Hikari leaned down, pressing down harder on her ankle, meeting her pained eyes with his own, sparking red lightning, “Don't even try thinking of using your quirk to try to get out of this situation. I might not have too much energy right now but I have enough to break your face. And my friends are more than happy to send you off to a hospital.”  
Hisoo’s face paled and slumped back to the ground. So with that Hikari arched himself back up and jumped at the sudden, “HANDS IN THE AIR!”  
Everybody turned to an entire team of policemen, pointing their pistols at everyone, shouting orders to which everyone clammed up what they were doing and glanced at Hikari.  
Hikari sighed, put his hands in the air, glancing back, making sure everybody else followed his example.  
“Hikari,” An officer sighed, walking up lowering his gun while signalling for his fellow officers to do the same, “I don’t think your dad is gonna like that you’ve been arrested again.”  
“Well officer Tsubara,” Hikari explained casually, “If it helps any for you, I wasn’t expecting to get into this fight either.”  
“It doesn’t matter Hikari,” Tsubara handcuffed him, leading him out as the rest of the cops handcuffed everyone else, “It’s not gonna be looking good for you with all these arrests on your record, especially with where you’re trying to get into.”  
Hikari clenched his teeth. As much as he hated it, Tsubara was right. If he wanted to get into UA, he had to stop with all the vigilantism, or stop getting caught.  
Hikari’s starting line was set and he was walking a tightrope.  
And that’s when Isobe’s painkiller wore off and he screamed as the pain rushed back in, tearing apart all his nerves with splashing of fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Onaka Taberu is an OC of a friend over from Tumblr! @shapeshifting-Cat!


	2. Episode 2 - Cleaning up the Messes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Instantly after the events of chapter 1, Hikari goes home from the hospital into some familial pissing offing, but later goes to check up on his friend's health from that fight, but one of his best friends ends up bearing some news that's quite upsetting.

“How much longer do I have to stay here?” Hikari swung his legs over the sides of a white hospital bed, a brand new cast covering the burns he suffered only hours ago. He had been undressed into a hospital gown but redressed himself in his clothes before the fight, his jacket placed to the side and feeling quite sad for his pants, which had been cut by the doctors to treat the burn. Right next to his bedside was officer Imari, simply sitting by the bed, pushing up the white hair from his forehead in annoyance.  
“Hikari, you just got out of the ER. IF anything you shouldn’t be going home at all!” Imari pointed at the cast and the rest of his injuries, “in the span of this single fight, you’ve had a cardiac arrest, second degree burns on your leg, which is made worse by the fact you kept putting weight onto it during the fight. You really should just stay overnight.”  
“Wel, you can’t exactly stop me from leaving,” he answered, “I can go home if I want officer.”   
“No. No you can’t,” Imari gesturing to the cast once again in disbelief at Hikari’s aloofness at his injury, “You put any more weight on that and you might not be able to properly walk anymore, much less run!”  
“I can walk home with a cradle.”  
“Hi-.”  
“Look, as much as I appreciate your concern, I just want to go home right now.” Before Imari could offer up any retorts on that, Hikari quickly brought up, “So how are my friends doing?”  
“I- Y- Well, Officer Taberu was going to check on Onaka,” Imari slouched in defeat, “and while she’s there, she'll check up with Sawa. Don’t worry too hard about it.”  
Hikari sighed from relief, “Hopefully she won’t blame me for Onaka.”  
“I’m more hoping that you don’t,” concern overtook Imari’s face as he leaned on his knees, “and I’m also hoping that you don’t try and take the blame for all this too. You keep getting into fights that involve your friends and say that everything was your fault. Whenever you get caught of course.”  
“None of my friends started it-”  
“You want to protect them, I get that but you’re destroying your future at the same time. One of these days you’re going to do something that you won’t be able to take back.”  
Hikari grimaced, angrily shouting, “Hey, I know all this already, so why don’t you let me worry about my future myself? And what did you expect me to do this time?! My friend was taken and neither you nor any heroes were going to get there in time to stop them from hurting her furthe-”  
“Hikari!” he jumped at the shout, but it wasn’t Imari that shouted.   
He turned his head up to see his father standing in the doorway, an emotionless screen of a face glaring at his son. The hero, Velocity Zero, Ren Hirakata, was still in his hero costume a black tight suit that had red speed lines going down the sides of his arm that formed up to his chest with a bright bold zero with the coattails that hung off his waist, leading down to his knees were more stitched up than Frankenstein's monster. A red scarf hung low on his neck, and googles placed on the top of his blown back jet black hair. The belt adorning his waist were packed tightly with cartridges and two solid metal tonfas hung waiting for use.  
Ren strode into the room, slapping the back of Hikari’s head, angrily demanding, “Apologize to Officer Imari. Now.”  
Hikari turned to Imari, asking instead, “So am I allowed to leave now?”  
“You’re not going anywhere until you apologize,” Ren demanded again, his face twitching and his patience started burning out like a candle.  
Hikari sighed, grabbing his crutches, slinging his jacket over his shoulder and irked, “Not sure what I have to apologize for but Im sorry for something that offended my dad.”  
“Hikari-” Ren grabbed Hikari’s hair and forced him to bow his head, “What my idiot son meant to say is 'I'm sorry that I was so rude and shouting in a hospital when people are trying to rest.’ Right?”  
Hikari’s hair spat out red lightning, shocking away Ren’s hand as Hikari fumbled up on his crutches, “Let’s just go already.”  
Hikari walked himself out of the hospital room, quickly moving out of earshot of Ren staying behind to talk to Imari. Probably more apologies or something for his “bad behavior.” Whatever it was, he didn’t care and just wanted to go.  
“Hirakata kun?” Hikari sighed, awkwardly spinning around coming face to face with Himitsu Taberu. Onaka’s mother was almost just as short, with brown hair and eyes, reminiscent of Onaka’s own eyes.   
As she took off her police cap he caught her glimpsing at his leg cast, “Are you leaving already? I thought you’d be staying here with that kind of injury-”  
“I’m not stayin,” Hikari cut in rudely. He had nothing against Onaka’s mom but if she was going to give him a lecture he wasn’t listening to it and started to turn back around.  
But before he could completely turn away she sighed, seeing his mood, opting to add quickly “I just wanted to say thank you. For doing what you did to save my daughter.”  
Hikari poked his eyebrows up, a thank you. That was new. “it was nothing special. I just did what any other person would have in that situation.”  
“Regardless of whether it was or not. . . thanks. I don't want to think about what would’ve happened if you weren’t-”  
“Weren’t there?” Ren finally strode up pushing with him a wheelchair, “If Hikari wasn’t what he was in the first place, then your daughter would’ve never been put in danger in the first place.”  
“If I wasn’t what I was?” Hikari bellowed, red lightning flickering more and more, “What kinda argument is that!?”  
“I can certainly blame you for being a fool who refuses to be mature enough to stop with the idiot act he put up and stop wasting what potential you have left.”   
“Why yo-”  
“Hikari,” Hitsumi cried, putting herself between Hikari and his father, turning her attention on Ren, defiantly looking up at the tall bastard, “Sir, with all due respect, no matter what you might think of your son that doesn’t change the fact he saved my daughter, which is more than worthy enough for praise rather than a scolding.”  
“Give him too much praise and his head will grow big. He has enough praise from his friends and you as well officer. It’s not your place to teach me how to be a parent just because you are one as well.”  
“You-” Hitsumi snarled, but was stopped by Hikari’s hand suddenly grabbing her shoulder, silently conveying a message to stop. The argument was getting louder than before and besides, he didn’t need help to tell off his father.  
“Can we go home now dad?” Hikari asked quietly, red lightning still sparking.   
Ren’s stare matched Hikari’s intensity so much that it wouldn't be surprised anybody if the two of them started sparking red lighting at each other. But he relented and walked past, casting one final glare at officer Hitsumi.  
Hikari sat in the wheelchair and was pushed out of the hospital in silence and outside to a very familiar big black family van with his mom pacing back and forth worriedly until she saw them wheeling up to the car.  
“Hikari!” She ran forward and hugged him tightly, instantly fussing, “Are you ok? Did the doctors tell you how badly injured your leg is!? Will it heal ok?”  
Hikari in between her smothering and questions answered, “Im fine, they said a second degree burn, it should heal properly if I don't put too much weight on it or really do anything too crazy with it.”  
The rest of that evening felt like a blur as they loaded him into the car and drove home. The ride was silent, except for the lecture that Hina was giving about being reckless. Hikari cast glances at his father who silently nodded or tilted his head with whatever his wife was saying.  
“I just- You can’t just keep doing this Hikari! Do you know how worrying it is, not knowing if your son is ok or not because you don’t know if he got into a fight or not!? You’re going to give your mother a heart attack from pure worrying!”  
“Sorry,” he would answer as he stared outside the window of the car, watching the street lights and bright buildings pass on by.   
They pulled up to a very familiar cafe and made their way inside. The pastel purples of the walls welcomed him quietly, sensing the irritability radiating off of him as he was wheeled past.   
He was stopped by the sudden realization by his mother and father that their home did in fact have stairs. Despite their sudden predicament, they carefully carried him up to their living room.  
Hikari barely took firm footing on the ground, when his little sister almost tackled him back down the stairs with a hug. Hime was jumping up, joyously shouting, “You’re back!”   
His little sister hugged his waist for a brief second before jumping back and demanding, “Did you win the fight? What am I saying, of course you did! You’re too strong for villains! I bet you had no problem dealing with them right?!”  
Hikari patted her long baby blue hair, taking small enjoyment as static electricity bounced into his fingers from her hair.  
[Hime Hirakata - Quirk: Human Taser: She can taze whoever she touches, though she can’t control the amount that she discharges yet]  
Hime, still bouncing around and punching the air, “Who’d you fight this time? Tell me tell me tell me!”  
Hikari cast a glance behind him to see his dad watching their interactions with a disapproving glance, so he instantly looked back at Hime, starting his latest adventure with, “Well Hime, this time I fought a elephant-”  
“Hikari, please,” Hina implored as she walked past, “indulge Hime after dinner.”  
“You guys haven’t had dinner yet?”   
“We were going to eat,“ Hoshi piped up in a monotone voice, his dirty dark azure hair curled to one side looking like it usually did.He rubbed the exhaustion out of his freckled face before continuing, "but we were told you were in the hospital and mom wanted to make sure you were ok before anything else. So dinner went cold."  
“I told you guys he was ok!” Hime shouted triumphantly, positively grinning that her prediction was correct, “I told you Hoshi, Hik always makes it out!”  
“That wasn’t what you were saying when we were watching TV Hime,” Hoshi corrected, a sly smile popping from his face, “You sounded pretty worried about it.”   
“Hoshiiii!” She whined smacking his thigh with a barrage of tiny fists.  
As Hime whined that Hoshi didn’t keep his promise that he wouldn’t tell, he helped Hikari limp over to the dinner table, the food barely warm from sitting out untouched. It only seemed to add to the unwelcoming atmosphere.   
Hikari didn’t look up from his bowl as he ate, knowing he’d catch his father’s eye and then maybe he’d get another scolding. He hated how small he felt, though he knew that he did what was absolutely right, his dad still somehow made him feel as if he did it wrong. Onaka’s mom even saw that he did the right thing, so why didn’t he?  
“So, Quite the day huh?” Hina spoke up, breaking the uncomfortable silence, smiling wryly, “Summer’s starting to come around so more customers showed up today! Me and the kids could hardly keep up with the orders.”   
She turned to Ren, “Dear, why don’t you take a day off hero work and help out with the cafe?”  
“Can’t. People would be in more danger the longer I’m not working.”  
She sighed, making no attempt to hide the disappointment in her voice, “shame. You work yourself too hard and one of these days it’ll be us who comes to your rescue.”  
"If he even wants the rescue," hikari muttered under his breath.  
Ren abruptly retorted, "well I would like for the rescue to be done by people who know what they're doing instead of someone playing the part."  
The clinking of Hikari’s chopsticks stopped as he glared, red lightning once again sparking, "I knew what I was doing-"  
"If you knew what you were doing then you would have saved taberu instead of fighting before anything else."  
"You take the villains down and you can take all the time you need to rescue the hostage!"  
"You made a mess and don’t want to own up to it,” Ren scoffed, “The only reason you survived at all was because your friends are smarter than you are and jumped in to save you."  
Hina looked to the roof and muttered something about wanting just one dinner where they wouldn't fight.  
"Well sorry I did a public service and saved someone."  
"You hardly ever get into fights under the reasoning that someone needs rescue. The one time doesn't justify every other time."  
"Those fights had better outcomes than before!"  
"All you do in those fights are fight other schools delinquents for looking at your friends wrong."  
"So I'm bad for doing the other good things that you happen to ignore?”  
“Like what?”  
“Oh I dont know dad,” Hikari looked up mockingly thinking, “Well, I picked fights with some real villains, scum of the earth kind of people who kinda spread illegal substances around to people my age?”  
“You ruined months of police investigation.”  
“I stopped them from spreading!”  
“You’ve only stopped them for now Hikari. If you wanted to do it properly, you should’ve called the police to handle it.”  
“Kozato called the police! I finished the villains by the time they arrived!”  
“Why can’t you just be like Hoshi? He’s never done any of this and look what he’s doing. Working to get his psychology degree and able to do so, WITHOUT the need to always punch something.”  
“That’s cause Hoshi’s Hoshi! He’s different than me, why can’t you understand that!?”  
“And why can’t you be a good son!?!” He slammed his chopsticks onto the table, drawing out a jump from everyone, as he angrily shouted, “Someone like you would never be any kind of hero, no matter what kind of school they go to!”  
Hoshi and Hina focused on their food as Hikari and his father glared at each other, both refusing to back down. That is, until Hime spoke up beside Hikari.  
“I think Hikari did good. He saved his friends and beat the bad guys!” she defended, earning a head pat from Hikari, happy that Hime was taking his side. “He’s gonna be the greatest hero ever! Especially when he gets into UA! He’ll be better than All Might!”  
“Hime you don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“I know that Hikari is trying his best!” She shouted confidently, jabbing her finger towards Hikari’s burned leg, “He got hurt saving his friend! But he kept fighting! Just like all the heroes in those stories I see in the TV!”  
“Hime-”  
“He’s not perfect but doesn’t that mean he should go to a good school to learn how to be better!?”  
Ren took a moment of silence in the face of Hime’s stubborn idolizing of Hikari and quite impeccable reasoning before sighing, fed up with all the arguing, placed what remained of his bowl of food down and started walking out of the room.  
“Uh- Dear?” Hina called out, starting to get up after him, “Do you need me to pack the rest of the dinner for you?”  
“That would be nice Hina.” Ren said, pausing at the stairs, muttering just barely loud enough where Hikari could hear, “FINE. If you want to go to UA go ahead. I’ll sign that paper, just know that if I hear anything, ANYTHING at all, about you being a nuisance you’re being pulled and sent to a school of my choice. I’m not letting you tarnish UA’s reputation with your antics.”  
Hikari’s eyes went wide as he processed. Did his dad just concede? His dad, after fighting Hikari’s wanting to go to UA for months, finally caved in!? Hikari felt like pinching himself even as Ren walked out without another word, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming or anything like that.   
His mother turned to Hikari with glee and pride pouring out of her eyes.   
“You’re going to UA!” Hime shouted for Hina, followed with chanting, “You’re gonna be a hero! Gonna be a hero, gonna be a hero!”  
Hikari, breathed out a tiny laugh, breaking into a smile as he finally took in his victory over his father.   
Hins mother ran over, planting a kiss on his cheek, happily cheering, “There’s going to be two heroes in the family! I’m so proud of you!”  
“If he can have some self restraint,” Hoshi piped up monotonically, “But hey, good on you Hikari.”  
Hikari threw a piece of dinner at him, “Stop ruining this for me. I have plenty of self restraint.”  
“I think we both know that’s wrong.”  
“Hoshi enough,” Hina shushed the both of them, “Hikari’s gonna have be able to go to UA!”  
“If he passes the exams.”  
“Well Hoshi, I think I can do grea-”  
“I meant the written portion. Not exactly a secret your grades aren’t exactly straight A’s and beyond. UA’s a prestigious school, they won’t take students who mostly average in B’s and C’s. That’s just common sense, not to mention your records of delinquency and your most recent arrest-”  
“Hoshi, I’m gonna punch you if you don’t shut up.”  
“That’s just proving dad’s point. And besides, you kept taking all the blame for your friends whenever you all got into fights. It doesn’t look to good for your permanent record now does it?” he didn't say any of that with a trace of malice in his voice, just stating it all as a simple matter of fact, serving to only fuel his displeasure.   
“Are you trying to say something?”  
“I’m being realistic Hikari,” Hoshi stated simply, standing up from the table and excusing himself from dinner, “You and your friends just make trouble for everyone. That’s pretty much all you guy’s have done since you formed-”  
“Hoshi enough!” Hina barked, “If you’re not going to be happy for Hikari then just go.”  
Hoshi left to his room without a word, shutting the door to his room with a soft thud. His mom apologized for Hoshi and started to ramble about ideas to celebrate but all that was discussed he forgot the moment he went to bed. But Hoshi’s words just lodged something into the back of his head. Something that simply stayed and grew like an infectious tumor. A thought that refused to shake itself, even as he went to sleep that night. It persisted through his dream, and into the next day.  
The next day he went back to the hospital for a checkup, for himself and as well as Onaka, to which he found the entirety of his gang already there. Apparently they had the same idea to visit Onaka so she wouldn’t be lonely or bored enough to do something dumb on her own.   
Jima had taken the day off from his cafe and was busy peeling an apple for Onaka to eat as Sawa was busy regaling her with the stories of older times and fights between the gang and bad guys. Jo leaned against the wall in the corner, listening as Isobe leaned on Sawa, correcting him in what happened in particular sequences as kozat argued with Isobe about what actually happened.   
Hikari was zoned out, sitting by the window clutching his crutches staring at the clock at the wall as the thought hissed in his head refusing to be put down no matter how much he batted it away.   
“-Kari? Yo Hikari!” Sawa brayed at him, swinging his hand at Hikari’s head. “You alright?   
Hikari easily dodged the swing, taking in the room to see everyone concernedly staring at him.   
“Sorry, what’s happened?”  
“I asked you something and ya didn’t respond after I said your name like five times.” Hikari, despite Sawa’s reddish hair covering more than half his face, felt his eyes being glared at him directly as he continued in a gruff voice, “You’ve got something on your mind so say it.”  
Hikari waved it off, “I dont got anything to say, you know best that if I had anything to say then I would’ve said it.”  
“Except we also know that you’re the type to rather not voice your own concerns even if they really bother you,” Jima added, ever so carefully carving up apples, “We’ve been around enough where we can tell if something is bothering you more than normal Hikari.”  
“You’re not the kinda guy to be staring off into space with that sort of expression on your face ya know?” Kozat added, frowning to mimic Hikari’s troubled face.   
“does it have to do with Hisoo being the bad guy?” Isobe asked gently.  
Jo snapped for Hikari’s attention, signing at him, “Forget about her. She saw you as a means to an end. Sooner or later, you would’ve figured it out and kicked yourself for not figuring it out sooner.”  
“You do seem kinda down Hik.” Onaka sat up in her bed feeding Puku the stomach mouth the apples Jima cut as she tilted her head, concern billowing in her big brown eyes. No, everyone had that concerned look. He just didn’t notice it.   
The thoughts snaked around and worked its way to Hikari’s tongue and he quietly blurted out, “I think the gang should break up.”  
Silence fell on the room for a second before Sawa, Onaka, and Kozat erupted shouting, “WHAT!? What the hell’s that mean Hikari!?!!?”  
Jo’s cool act seemingly broke as her eyes were wide with surprise and Isobe was speechless, staring with wide eyes as well.  
“Break up the gang!?” Sawa shouted, grabbing Hikari’s collar and pulling him up to meet his face, his rarely seen scarlet eyes glaring past his hair and into Hikari’s, “You’d better tell me what the hell you’re thinking about spewing shit like that out of your mouth!”  
“Sawa-”  
“Well Hikari!? Answer!” Sawa’s personi started emerging, it’s gray crowned head melting off his back and forming the rest of it’s six armed body-  
“Sawa. Stop.” Jima demanded smoothly. The entire room went dead calm in an instant. Sawa’s hostility melted faster than ice cream thrown into a furnace as his personi emerged to just hang it’s arms at its sides.   
Sawa let go of Hikari’s collar as Jima finished up one final apple slice, his blue eyes glowed teal as his quirk worked into the room.   
“Let’s hear have Hikari actually have a chance to explain before you render him unable to talk.”   
Sawa backed down easily and everyone looked to Hikari expectantly, as he hesitantly recounted, “I. . . . you already know this but I want to go to UA. . . . I want to become a hero. And I just got permission to go.”  
“That’s GREA-” Jima put an apple in Onaka’s mouth and nodded for Hikari to continue.  
“I got permission . . . but something my dad and Hoshi said kinda just, stuck. All I’ve ever really done is get into fights and drag anyone near me into it.” He glanced at Onaka, guilt building like a brick in his gut, before continuing, “And I really dont think that’s gonna help anybody’s futures. And being in this gang just brought trouble. Which is why I think we should disband before something especially bad happens that nobody’s gonna be able to recover from.”  
A somber quiet fell over the room. Not one person knew what to say, which only made Hikari more uncomfortable than ever, wanting to just sprint out of the room to avoid the quiet.   
“Ok.” The silence broke with Jo’s loud whisper. Everyone turned quickly, confused by her answer, but she added, “We’ll still be friends even if the gang dissolves.”  
“ . . . well, that whole gang thing was a rumor anyways, we kinda just went along with it till it blew up on us,” Kozat reasoned.  
“I didn’t mean disbanding the gang like that.”  
“Then just say exactly what you mean,” Jima asked calmly still, beckoning, “We can’t come to an understanding unless all the cards are on the table, so to speak.”  
“I mean that we shouldn’t be friends anymore.” Hikari looked to his feet, despite Jima’s quirk calming him, he couldn’t stop the cold from burrowing deeper into his gut, lightning sparked a darker shade of blue than his normal, “All I’ve brought for you is harm and fights you should’ve never fought. It’d be better off for us if we stopped so your guys’s records won’t be permanently screwed over with all the stuff I did.”  
“. . . . but you take all the blame anyways. Well, you try at least.” Kozat danced his hands around, “So that doesn’t do any good for you.”  
“And fights? That stuff’s always been with most of us, those are our own faults,” Sawa shifted his hair around, hiding his eyes, “Blamin it all on you is selfish don’t you think?”  
“But I-”  
“Hikari. Correct me if I’m wrong but, you think all you’ve done is hurt us since we’ve met,” Jima explained, grabbing everyone’s attention once again, “you focus on the bad and never any of the good you’ve done. Sure you’ve gotten into fights, but every time it was usually with people who deserved to be beaten. Drug dealers, small time villains, and the like. I’m certain you’ve shouted at your father numerous times that you’ve helped people through these battles. You deserve to believe in yourself.”  
“Yeah, fuck your dad!” Kozat shouted triumphantly.  
“In addition. . . .” Jima gave Kozat a disapproving look for interrupting, “you’ve made our individual lives better than before we met.”  
Everyone nodded somberly in agreement as Hikari remembered the state that his friends were in when he met them the first time. Kozato was basically a bully, picking on everyone and everything that bothered him, starting fights for the sake of fighting until Hikari beat him down and made him stop bullying. The reason for this drive for bullying was that everyone had apparently told him his quirk was too weak and useless to be anything, so he kept thinking that he had to fight to prove his worth.   
Isobe was in a bad place in some ways, his “friends” at that time kept him around for the sole purpose of getting high and drugging themselves up, all while ignoring Isobe almost entirely. He spent his days alone unless he was wanted for drug abusing by those “friends.” Hikari was the first person who wanted to talk to him for more than just his quirk which was quite an eye opener for him.  
Sawa was like Kozat, only his explosive temper always kept getting the wrong kinds of attention, him bumping into delinquents and his quirk reacting to his temperament and easily beating them to the ground. It wasn’t until Hikari came around that Sawa started managing himself better, with support from Jima helping out every now and then. Well now at least he’s less prone to outbursts of punching everything. Though he’s still loud and demanding a fight with Hikari every once in a while to both of their mutual enjoyment.  
Jo’s quirk forced her to be unable to talk for the most part if she didn’t want to ear blast everyone nearby to deafness, so she learnt hand signs as a way to communicate. Unfortunately for her, not everybody knew hand signs rendering her new communication skills almost useless. But Hikari learned how to read Japanese Sign Language so he could properly have conversations with her. That took off their friendship quickly, hell it even momentarily blossomed into a bit of a romance for a while. Though it ended, they’re obviously on good terms still and surprisingly, get along easier.  
Onaka though, she was new and how she joined up was through asking if she could, straight up no fuss or funny business. Since then she fit in comfortably, coming up with whimsical shenanigans of all kinds, some of which they had to save her from accidently seriously hurting herself but it seemed as though she was a part of them all along.  
Jima seemed to be something of an exception, as much as Hikari thought, Jima was always pretty well off. Ever since they met as kids, Jima seemed to be the one who never changed yet kept up with Hikari every step of the way.   
“You see things in only one direction when it applies to the other, not that there’s anything wrong with that mind you,” Jima added nicely, his teal eyes turning back to their soft blue as he assuringly smiled, “just remember, you're doing good no matter what your father or brother, or anyone may say or compare you to."  
“But what you’re not doing good,” Isobe cut in, “is how you keep trying to pin all the fights we’ve had on yourself.”  
Jo whispered in, “You keep taking the blame to minimize the damage that we might have on our futures. You always put us ahead of you. You need to learn to take care of yourself too. You deserve to have the same bright future you want us to have. We’re taking that burden with you because we’re your friends.”  
Hikari fell silent at their words. Then electricity started fizzing at the edges of his eyes to which he looked down and away in a futile attempt to hide them.   
"Could yall look away for a second? Please?"  
"Are you seriously crying?"   
"What if I am?"  
"Its better to let your emotions out however they may come out, by crying or otherwise,” Jima advised.  
Sawa however raised personi’s arm, “Need to vent some of that frustration with Personi?”  
"I dont need [SWEATPANTS] to punch me, I'm fine."  
Sawa groaned over the noise of Jo and Jima snapping rapid pictures of the super rare crying hikari, "can you guys stop calling him sweatpants? Youre making him sound dumb."  
"Dont say that about sweatpants!" Onaka gasped, "hes plenty smart on his own!"  
"You wanna go new kid?"  
"Point is boss," kozat proclaimed, "we're not going anywhere! We're sticking right by you for better or worse and not letting go no matter what you're protesting!"  
"Hells yeah!" Onaka shouted, matching Kozat’s energy, "Together to the end! Us against the world!"  
“Considering that almost all of you are heading to UA anyways, the wonder team isn’t going to break up anytime soon.” Jima scratched his chin, “well most of us anyways.”  
“Wait what?” Hikari stared in surprise at Jima, panning across everyone who stared at Jima who smiled unapologetically.  
“I thought we agreed to surprise him!” Isobe whined, slapping his back.  
Jima’s endearing smile only seemed to grow, answering smugly “well first of all, I never agreed to that. Second, you should get promises in writing or a pinky swear to really make it official.”  
“Pinky promise? Really?”  
“Hold on,” Hikari put his hands in a T, “Who's going to UA? Gettin real confused here.”  
Sweatpants raised it’s arm from behind Sawa, Jo raised her hand low, and Isobe shook it a little bit, muttering, “well if anything I’m going to common class if anything.”  
Hikari quizzed, “So are you guys going because of me or-”  
Sawa slapped Hikari’s head angrily shouting, “Not everything about you asshole!”  
“SAWA HE’S INJURED!” protested Isobe as Hikari gingerly rubbed his newfound headache.  
“I want to go to UA because that’s where I’ll finally get the proper stage to show off my abilities!” Sawa proclaimed loudly, striking a flamboyant pose as Sweatpants dramatically flexed his six arms in an equally flamboyant pose.  
“So you’re in it for the fame?”  
“Don’t get all uppity with me Hirakata,” Sawa snarled, switching back to last name basis in a snap, “You just want to go because you’ll finally get your adrenaline pumping, but legally this time.”  
Hikari scoffed at the fact, glancing at Jo, who simply signed, “I want to be a hero to help people.”  
Kozat said somewhat low and embarrassed, “Well I’m wanted to go to Shiketsu. Not exactly the same as UA but I want to pursue my own little path to Herohood away from you guys?”  
Kozat suddenly felt an unexpected headpat from Hikari, who leaned out from his chair to pat his brown hair, affirming, “Well I’m glad you’re following your dreams Koz.”   
Koz pouted at being patted like a child but didn’t protest it, listening to Onaka as she wondered aloud, “Well I didn’t give too much thought about where I’m going to school after this school year. That’s an oof on my part.”  
“You’ve got plenty of time,” Hikari assured, miffed he was unable to actually lean over to reassuringly pat her too.   
“If it comes to it, you could go join UA for common class. They got more than just heroing there ya know?” Isobe pointed out to Onaka, squinting in consideration of that proposal.  
A sudden rattling at the door interrupted the team bonding, sliding open quickly to reveal a familiar purple and white haired girl, wearing a black baseball cap, a gray hoodie, face mask, and sunglasses that went under her white patch of hair.  
“What’s up yall!? Guess who’s out and about!” Kin proclaimed, sporting a bag of chips in both hands.  
Onaka matched her hyperness immediately, calling back at her, “Yooooooo Shizuma!” The two gremlins instantly parading about Kin’s sudden arrival.   
“You doin good Onaka? I heard you got hit pretty hard in the back of the head?”  
“I’m a bit loopy from the medicine they gave but I’m doin just great!”  
Everybody was hit with the surprise of Kin’s arrival, responding, “Guess you finally came out of your cave huh?”  
“Shush Sawa, How’s Sweatpants doing?”  
“Personi,” Sawa annunciated, annoyed with Kin’s nickname for his quirk, “Is doing just fine.”  
“Hey, sweatpants is a good name, he seems to like it!” Kin distributed her snacks around, pulling out a game console to play on from her hoodie’s pocket, lightening the mood from moments prior.  
Hikari came face to face with a realization, Kin was also going to UA. Or at least, that’s what he heard? But was it true? His stomach turned over with the thought and he sparked yellow bolts of dread.  
“Hey kin?”   
Jima noticed the bolts of yellow and warily warned, “hikari.”  
Kin turned, not noticing Hikari’s lightning, holding up a bag of chips for him, “yo Blizz, didn’t forget about you of course, I got the goods for you too-”  
“Are you also going to UA?”


	3. Episode 3 - Robo-mayhem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day of the entrance exam is HERE!

UA. The school for heroes, the place that birthed legends like All Might, the current number one hero Endeavor, and probably way more future heroes who have yet to have had their chance to shine. And most recently, a graduated, Izuku Midoriya, or better known as DEKU has set out from UA in hopes to achieve his dream of becoming the Number One Hero! UA served to be a dream school for heroes worldwide, and many of the applicant students walking through it's doors were full with excitement and anticipation. Well, all but one student.

Kin Shizuma sat close to the front row seats closest to the stage, holding her exam's introduction papers in her hands, but unfortunately was crumpling it as she felt the disapproving glare of Hikari in the packed auditorium felt like it was drilling into the back of her head as he sat a few rows back behind her with Sawa and Jo at his sides, concernedly looking at each other.

"You stare at her any harder and she'll explode," Sawa leaned into Hikari. Sweatpants's head and arms emerged from behind Sawa to read the papers as Sawa talked.

Kin, down in her rows, squirmed a bit doing her best to ignore but as she would put it, it felt like a beholder was trying to use it's death beam on her.

Hikari sighed, quietly trying to keep his self control intact to prevent him from just running down to her and making a scene of it all. But as he did, he started recalling what happened at the hospital.

Kin's eye had gone wide with the room suddenly going silent with awkwardness as Hikari stared questioningly.

"Well," Kin glanced to the sides thinking of a way out but came up empty. "I . . . yeah. I'm applying to UA."

Hikari's lightning sparked red, yellow, and green like a traffic light as he breathed in slowly. Then just as slowly, processing it, before exploding, "Are you INSANE!?"

Everyone in the room jumped as Hikari ranted, his instinctual overprotectiveness running rampant, "Why didn't you tell me!? You can't go to UA! You're gonna get seriously hurt! What the hell is going through that head of yours-"

"Blizz-"

"What do your parents think about this?!"

"Actually they-"

"Have you even thought this through?!"

"If you let me finish talking them maybe I could answer some of those questions of yours." Kin argued back, angrily throwing a bag of chips at him, to which Hikari batted it aside with ease.

She took a moment to collect herself and her thoughts as Hikari waited, "Look. . . . We can at least talk about this later. We all came here to help Onaka not feel so lonely and this is just making this awkward, which in my most humble of opinions, is worse than lonely. So LATER, ok?"

The rest of the gang avoided eye contact with either of the two, opting to look at the fascinating white walls or having silent conversations with each other.

Hikari sighed in defeat, "Fine. but we WILL talk about this later."

". . . Yeah, sure thing Blizz."

And they never did. For the following months, Kin actively avoided contact with Hikari, enclosing herself in her basement and her parents telling Hikari that she was busy with "Something of absolute UBER importance."

And that continued for the following months, in between recovering from his burned ankle, getting exercise to prepare for the exam and the occasional sparring with Sawa and his Sweatpants, all lead into today. Hikari staring down Kin as she sat a few rows down, while Sawa and Jo trying their best to lessen the intensity.

"WELCOME TO TODAY'S LIVE PERFORMANCE!" Present Mic shouted eccentrically, "Can I get an OH YEAH!?"

The auditorium fell silent, except for Kin who shouted "OH ye- oh," tapering off when nobody else joined in, sitting back down in shame as people giggled at her outburst. But Present Mic seemed to be happy that somebody at least joined in.

"Thank you listener for that response and thank you all for coming here today!" As Mic proceeded to talk about the beginning of the slides, Hikari could see Kin practically buzzing despite her embarrassment literal few seconds ago, no doubt ecstatic about seeing Present Mic in person in the front row seats.

Present Mic continued with the Presentation, his banana yellow hair and voice reverberated with hyper energy as he explained the rules for this exam, "This test will go as follows my dear listeners! Each of you will be seperated into a mock city site and have ten minutes to go wild! Bring whatever you want with you, after I'm finished you'll be able to head to your assigned testing grounds!"

"So we won't be able to help each other out huh?" Sawa noted listening carefully as the presentation turned to the fake villains and points system, "Well at least we'll get our own moments to shine."

Hikari frowed, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hikari, you got a pretty flashy quirk. People are going to notice you first if anything."

"Then that just means you're not strong enough to have passed anyways."

"What was that?"

"You heard me, if you're gonna be overshadowed by me then you might as well just not putting in enough work."

"Ah. I see," Sawa nodded thoughtfully for a second, before yanking Hikari's collar, lifting him up and shouting, "YOU CALLIN ME WEAK!?"

"I JUST MIGHT BE!" Hikari shouted back, lightning sparking from his hair, blinding in the darkened auditorium in response to Sawa's Sweatpants raising it's six fists. "I DOUBT YOU'LL BE ABLE TO TAKE DOWN THAT ZERO POINTER!"

"I'd like to see you try!"

Jo suddenly pushed herself in between them, gripping their shoulders like a vice and forcing them down while ordering loudly, "Sit down, SHUT UP."

Fearing Jo's wrath, Sawa and Hikari fell silent, ignoring the hushed whispers, asking why they were even there, and the incredulousness of why UA would even consider taking in the two hooligans.

". . . . Are we all settled back there now? Good, this year we have a new prototype being put into effect for this very exam!" Mic shouted excitedly, not letting Hikari and Sawa's interruption spoil his mood. The auditorium suddenly went abuzz with muttering and questions.

"In addition to the zero to three pointer villains, there will be a new and more durable obstacle in the way, and are also worth twenty points each!" Hikari leaned in closer, curiosity getting ignited, "But the catch here viewers, is that because these robots are so tough and durable, you can't get points for destroying them! These twenty pointers are newly made puzzle bot!"

The projector switched slides to a silhouette of something vaguely human with a large 20 stapled onto it's chest.

"The puzzle bots will all have a button on it that will deactivate them quick and easy! But the issue is finding where the buttons are and being able to actually be able to press it! It's much harder than it sounds dear listeners so I'd say that you best take these things real seriously! Think of them like a Terminator, a walking tanky gimmick like the Zero Pointer, their purpose is to take you down and won't stop till you're on the ground. Don't fear however, once on the ground, it shouldn't attack you then."

"Sounds simple enough-"

"One last thing to note for these!" Mic screamed again, "If you destroy these twenty pointers then twenty points will be deducted instead! So play it safe and avoid it or try to take it on, it's all up to you!"

Mic closed up the presentation, "Now then. That'll be all from me listeners! I'll be leaving you off with our school motto. As George Kennan once said, 'Heroism is endurance for one moment more.' Break a leg out there views, Give it your all, go Plus Ultra."

As soon as people started getting up from their seats and heading to the exit, Hikari scanned the crowd, electricity jumping off of him as he took his time, looking for Kin like a where's waldo book.

Before long he saw Kin in the crowd but before he could move to intercept and try to talk to her, a voice suddenly cut through the silence of slowed time, "You haven't changed much eh Hikari?"

He snapped out of stopped time as he wildly looked around. The voice playfully chimed in again, "Left. Up, a little more left," and his eyes finally pinpointed down on the source of the voice.

She smiled mischievously, a bob cut of black fluffy hair and pink hair clip holding her bangs to the side of her face as she waved happily, greeting properly, "Nice to see you again Hikari!"

Sawa and Jo, noticing Hikari's sudden flurry of movement, tracked his line of sight and saw who he was staring at.

Sawa pointed and asked in gleeful surprise, "Hey is that Miki!? . . . Oh yeah it's Miki."

Hikari vanished from Jo and Sawa's side and reappeared next to Miki asking a flurry of questions, wanting to know how she had been since they had seen each other, which was give or take, about two years ago.

Sawa and Jo gave each other a glance and decided to go on ahead of Hikari to their testing sites. Let him catch up and hopefully distract him from the whole, "Kin's going to be a hero" debacle that he was obsessing over for the past few months.

Hikari's blurr of questions blew into Miki's face, to which she failed to keep up with, only getting a blast of air from the backwash and his talking. The way he was asking kinda reminded her of a dog whose owner finally got home.

"Glad to see you haven't changed too much," Miki managed to get out as they walked their way out of the auditorium, "How's the rest of the gang been?"

"Oh great actually-"

"You guys got into a fight with a buncha criminals?!" Miki almost shouted in surprise, "And the- . . . oh Hikari, I'm sorry about Hisoo."

[Miki Koji: Quirk - Psychic: She is able to read the thoughts of everyone around her. She also has telekinesis, lifting things over 5 times her own weight with ease]

"I . . . It's fi-"

"Oh, and your ankle. OH, Kin's also here!? Oh . . . oh. You're not too happy about thaaaat," Miki cringed. She sheepishly a little bit, taking a step back, realizing she was probing a little too much. "You've had a crazy past few weeks huh?"

"Nothing too exciting on my end aside from, well all that," Hikari admitted, "What about you?"

"Oh! Well um," Miki put a hand to her chin thinking hard, "Well honestly not much happened with me. Gordon's still the same old Gordon and Ozaki?" her face turned sad at the thought of her brother, but it vanished instantly when her face lit up as she spotted someone in the crowd.

"Oh hey, speaking of Gordon!" Miki announced as she waved down a gargantuan nearly seven feet tall mountain of scale and muscle.

Miki flagged him down and lo and behold, Gordon Koji, adopted brother of Miki Koji, stood before them. He really hadn't changed since last Hikari saw him, aside from a few horns on his head having grown slightly larger. Red scales covered his face and horns adorned his head instead of hair, akin to something like a dragon. Gordon was one of the few people that Hikari actually ever looked up to, physically mostly, but the two of them did used to hang around. Heck, some of what Hikari does now was partly because of Gordon inspiring him. However inspiring probably isn't the right wording.

"Hey Hikari," Gordon greeted, voice rumbling ominously despite the casual energy behind his greeting. Yep, just as how he remembered him. "How've you been?"

"As of late? I'm doin better.." Gordon raised a scaly eyebrow and didn't question much further. Hikari was pretty sure that Miki just told him, "I'll tell you later," with her telepathy.

"Hm," Gordon hmmed.

Miki's head suddenly snapped up and looked around wildly, scanning the crowd for something. Leaving Hikari and Gordon to stand and try to socialize. Much to both of their discomfort.

The crowd of people moved aside suddenly as a pillar of flames made their way closer and closer to the trio until he popped out from the mob. Ozaki Koji, popped out, a fire replaced where there would normally be hair and holding onto his knees panting tiredly, "I- Made it- Sorry-"

He turned his head up to see Hikari and froze in astonishment, "Hikari!?"

"Why is everyone surprised to see me here?!"

"You know exactly why," Miki teased.

"Yeah, you did get into a lotta trouble," Ozaki added in much to Hikari's detriment, pinching Ozaki's cheeks in retaliation.

"Either way, I'm glad to see that you're ok," Ozaki managed to say through the pinch cheeking ordeals.

"Happy to see you too bud."

" . . you've had a CRAZY past few months huh?" Ozaki looked like he just received a massive revelation as Hikari shot Miki a slightly annoyed glance, "But hey, you got past it all and are all the more manly for it!"

"Manly?" Hikari kept to himself that bit, "I don't remember Ozaki talking about manly things that often before. . oh well."

As they made their way to the testing sites, they caught up in what happened in the past two years that they had away from each other. But they started to separate out once again, Hikari wishing Gordon and Ozaki luck in their exams until they were left with just him and Miki, heading to the same city site.

As they made their way to the testing site that they shared Hikari felt warm inside. Being side by side with Miki again felt . . . right-

"But with the way that things ended it still feels off huh?"

Hikari halted for a second as Miki continued, "Don't get me wrong. I like this too. I missed hanging around with you and it feels great that we got to meet back up again and talk like this. And it feels like it should just stay like this if I'm being honest."

Hikari processed her words and was once again, thrown back into the past when he and Miki were dating. For a good few months, they both had something special and for those months, the two of them enjoyed each other's company more and more. But somewhere along the way. They felt something was missing. But neither of them could figure it out. The initial spark that made them go together so easily had gone out, and it slowly balled up with neither of them wanting to acknowledge it.

Miki's moving away was what finished off the relationship. Her parents had to move for work, and with them went their relationship, cut off once they finally acknowledged that things weren't the same as they used to be.

"I- I didn't mean to-"

"Yeah I know. Just thought I'd . . throw it out into the open," Miki slumped, annoyed with herself, "God, I'm sorry I'm making this weird. I just- I know you're not the kind of guy to try and do something like that and, well . . people get random thoughts all the time. I definitely know that better than anybody."

Miki's mind reading wasn't something that she could really control too much. Her quirk just made it so that she'd be able to read the thoughts of everyone in a pretty big area. It was the same as having dozens of radios playing at the same time while trying to focus on her own radio. Constantly reading everyone's thoughts and picking up on impulsive thoughts always weighed on her mind, and she kept mistaking other thoughts as her own. And sometimes she just responded to thoughts as if people had actually said the things they thought.

"Well," Hikari started, thinking of how to relieve Miki's discomfort, opting to slowly and as non threateningly as he could muster, "You said it yourself. You know better than anyone that random thoughts happen all the time. And that you know that I'm not the kind of person to try to force anything. And . . .well, things might be a little weird, but let's just try and take it-"

"One step at a time?"

Hikari broke through the awkwardness and tried for a small smile, "yeah. One step at a time."

Miki smiled in relief, glad for Hikari's understanding and realizing how much she had missed it.

Miki then had to go run off to go get changed for better robot crushing clothes, leaving Hikari waiting in the crowd of dozens of students. He didn't bother changing from his black punk jacket and pants. And aside from that, he didn't really bring anything else aside from the clothes he has on.

As he waited for the exam to actually begin, he stood alone towards the back of the group. He didn't need Miki's mind reading to know that people felt uncomfortable with his presence. But it wasn't anything that he wasn't used to. But even though he was disconnected from the group, something caught his eye also toward the back.

A sleazebag with shaved sides and back and very gelled to the side hair, standing at least 2 heads taller over a short girl with long black hair, visibly angry with the whole situation.

Hikari fought back his urges to go in and disrupt the group but he kept in mind, "I do anything reckless and I can kiss my chances of getting into UA goodbye."

"Seriously my guy, I'm not interested," The black haired girl replied to the sleaze's advances.

"Comeon don't be like that!" Hikari glanced back over despite his repeating of what he has on the line and saw him attempting to put a hand on her shoulder and the next thing he knew, he was grabbing the guy's wrist and wrenching it back.

"Hey what the hell!?" he shouted, "Let go o-"

"Listen buddy, I'm in a bad mood today and I'd rather prefer you not pulling this kind of shit," everybody's eyes were on him, lots of witnesses if they were going to report this. Oh well, he was here and may as well just go through with it, so he leaned menacingly closer to the guy, lightning sparking around as he threatened, "She's uninterested. Get it in your head and leave her ALONE."

"Yeah!" The girl shouted, popping out from behind Hikari, "And for all intents and purposes, I'm a guy!"

The harasser managed to get his arm free from Hikari's grip and stumbled back, wisps of smoke and blue fire coming off of his body as he tried to stare him down. Hikari silently begged him to throw a punch, fireball, anything so he could lay him out properly. Sometimes words weren't enough to really get a lesson across. But the guy was smarter than he gave him credit and turned around to the crowd, trying to leave the situation as fast as possible.

Hikari turned back to the guy sighing in exasperation, "Thanks for the help. Probably would've hit him if he kept bothering me. I keep getting mistaken as a child or a girl, why was I born with such a small body!" he knelt down and looked to the gods for an answer, but the gods didn't make a response to his inquiry.

As he was kneeling and energetically praying, Hikari noticed that his legs from the shorts down were mechanical. Hikari wasn't a mechanic by any means, but even he could tell that whoever made the prosthetics were incredibly high quality because for one thing, the whole thing was covered in a dull red chassis that hide the inner working mechanisms that seemed to allow the leg to move as freely as it would need to.

The guy sprung back up from praying and seemed to be renewed with energy, "So! My name's Nezha Chengsik! What about you!?"

"Hikari Hirakata," He answered blandly.

"Cool! Were you the guy who was shouting at the auditorium? Was the other guy your friend? What's your quirk? How tall are you? How'd you get so damn tall?"

"Can you slow down with the questions?" Hikari pleaded, fearing the new and clearly hyper friend he had just made. He noticed something in the way that Nezha was talking, an accent of sorts. Like he learned Japanese from a textbook and was only recently putting it into use.

"Sorrysorrysorry!" Nezha apologized, bowing his head quickly, "Didn't mean to overwhelm you with questions Hirakata-san!"

"Just . . call me Hikari." He waved off Nezha's apology, explaining, "I don't like formalities."

"Oh? Isn't that disrespectful? I don't know you all that well." Hikari's foreigner suspicions were confirmed so he took a second to figure out a proper reply.

"It's disrespectful if you just do it outright and you don't know the person," Hikari articulated slowly. Seeing Nezha nod in understanding, he extended further, "If they give you permission then it's therefore, ok to refer to them by what they want you to call them. That make any sense?"

Nezha nodded enthusiastically at the sudden language lesson and Hikari felt a little proud that he actually managed to do so.

"Wow! You managed to actually teach for once," Miki exclaimed as she walked up to Hikari and Nezha, "and on a subject that you could care less about."

She saw Nezha's confused face and added quickly, "he doesn't care about formalities so he just refers to everyone by their first names."

Nezha suddenly gasped in surprise, "He's a degenerate!?"

"I prefer delinqu-"

"You pick fights with people a lot huh?"

"I don't pick fights- Miki what're you telling him?"

"The tea."

"You got a speed quirk huh?"

"Well. yeah."

"AH," Nezha jerked a thumb back at himself, raising his chin proudly, "I'm something of a speedster myself."

"Are you now?" Hikari perked up an eyebrow, curiosity hooked, "Wanna race?"

"Race? Where?"

"Well here and now is a pretty good place to start," Hikari looked at the giant city site, "Whoever takes out the most robots between the two of us wins."

"You're on!" Nezha excitedly declared, instantly setting himself into a runner's position and eagerly waiting for the starting signal. Hikari got out his phone and started browsing his music while untangling his earphones.

"Everybody, the exams have BEGUN!" A thunderous voice screamed, Present Mic screamed from the top of the tower overseeing the testing sites, "What're y'all waiting for!? GO GO GO GO!!!!"

Everyone in the group immediately sprung into action, Nezha started sprinting full tilt, getting faster by the second, and Miki, telekinetically grabbed and launched herself, leaping to the front of the group, taking a second to glance back at Hikari who hadn't moved at all. In fact he was still scrolling through his phone looking for a song to jam to.

"Noo. noo. Not in the mood for that," Hikari hummed to himself, unconcernedly looking up at the running crowd, the first people barely reaching the gate's entrance, before finally settling on a song, plugging in his earphones, and everything went silent.

The arguably best thing about being able to move at super fast speed was the silence. The faster Hikari goes, the more quiet the world gets, meaning the more that Hikari could listen to his songs without interruption. Well, up to a certain point at least. His songs couldn't keep up so he had to stay at around his 40% for the best quality.

So with the guitars playing and the rhythms of the drum sets, he ran right past everyone else as they inched forwards to their goal. He almost felt bad for them, but he pressed on regardless.

In one second, a lightning bolt shot right past every single one of them, disappearing into the streets, only Miki being unsurprised at the sudden development. In the next seconds, a squad of low pointer robots and were dismantled before they could come up with some kind of counter attack to this speedster menace.

In Hikari's world of musical guitar riffing, he air guitared a robot's salvaged arm, smashing apart robots casually with the arm the next second to the hard hitting notes, counting how many robots he had crushed at that point.

"Ten, twelve, ooh that's a lot of them right on this street . . . twenty droids gone!" he hummed to himself, in time with the song, before deciding to slow down. He didn't know the total of robots at the site and didn't remember how many points the robots he destroyed were worth. All he knew was that he had to destroy as many robots as possible, but he felt that he had done enough. Best leave some to the competition to be fair.

So he opted to wander around watching everyone else go about their exams He walked past Miki, who was crushing the robots into metal balls, nothing too extraordinary, the fire dude from earlier throwing out what seemed to look like blue flaming gremlins, so he kinda just wondered what was his deal before moving on.

But he suddenly felt a breeze blow past him, and turned in alarm to see Nezha flying past, his black hair streaking as he went alarmingly fast. He was slide tackling the whole way on his metal legs, a trail of sparks burning a path of scorched concrete behind him, quickly jumping up and decapitating a one pointer with a kick and landing back down sliding in one smooth motion.

[Nezha Chengsik: Quirk - Trailblazer: Nezha is able to turn his whole body, clothes and other attachments included, completely frictionless, allowing for constant acceleration and high top speeds! Fast reactions are needed to make the most of this as well as balancing between frictionless and friction to maintain a safe speed]

The way that Nezha bounced around was mesmerizing, almost as if he were dancing amidst all the destruction. His face was taut with concentration, focusing on reacting in time with his speed as to not accidentally smash himself into a wall. But despite the obvious concentration, he was smiling with ease, which added to Hikari's impression of him.

But his watching of Nezha's work was interrupted by somebody going flying almost as fast as Nezha was going, down the street, aiming to vigorously meet a building. But Hikari managed to bolt on over and catch him before impact.

The world sped back up, and it was only then did he notice all the explosions ringing across the city site, and took a second to get adjusted, taking out his earphones and set down his robot arm to assess the guy he just caught.

He was dazed, obviously hurt from whatever just threw him so hard. He opened his eyes, grabbing his head of brown hair, groaning in pain then noticed Hikari.

"Oh. Hello there, thanks for catching me," He said in a monotone voice, annoyingly enough reminding him of his brother, but the followup caught him off guard, "Do you mind if I get some of your hair?"

"What?"

"Well I need to consume your DNA and copy your quirk to-"

"Wait copy my quirk? One, bad idea, my quirk could kill you, two, why didn't you come into this thing prepared? If you need to ask a complete stranger then I think you kinda just played yourself by doing that."

"Oh well. I was just going to try to expand my collection. And besides, the quirk I copied isn't doing too much to that twenty pointer."

Twenty pointer? Hikari turned and saw a massive cloud of dust blanketing a whole street, and emerging from that smokescreen was a silver humanoid machine, in major contrast to all the other robots and their dark green chassis. It stomped forwards methodically, watching Hikari and his opponent and waiting for their next move, it's face a smooth dome that seemed to dare them to come to attack it.

And that unspoken dare hooked Hikari instantly, standing up and sparking electricity off his body as he gauged the terminator-like robot, bolting instantly, rearing for a swing with his bat with bated curiosity about whether it'll provide any sort of challenge.

Meanwhile in a darkened room, at the center of the city site testing the teachers of UA watched the screens, highlighting the several various battles across the multiple sites. Robots getting melted, crushed, blown apart, and destroyed in a number of other various ways.

Principal Nezu from the back of the theatre explained to the teachers watching the projections, "- and so in an effort to more accurately find which students would be a better fit for the Hero Course, we created the puzzle droids! Though by the time we finished the actual design and programming for them, we unfortunately couldn't quite test them as much as we'd wanted to, but we refined them to be a real challenge for whoever may try to go up against them."

Hikari swung his robot arm back but halfway down the street, the android slammed it's foot and the entire street erupted, destroying all of Hikari's footing, staggering to it the rest of the way.

"For this test run, we gave the androids knowledge of the testers and their specific quirks so that it would be able to combat and counter whoever they encountered."

Hikari jerked to an instant stop, forced back out of bolt time as the robot clotheslined him with the length of its arm, swinging Hikari directly into the building nearby.

"Of course to ensure student safety, it's parameters to stop assault are clearly defined. It is to not attack students who are running away, not fighting back, or are laying on the ground."

Hikari punched through a solid concrete wall by the throw, and was subsequently hidden away from the android's view. The android straightened itself out, seeing that it's opponent was gone and "defeated," setting out to patrol the street once again, daring anyone to attack it for a huge point bonus. At least until Hikari bolted from the empty store, grabbing it's head and slamming it into the ground before grinding its face across the street.

"But of course, the main point of the android isn't to incite even more combat, it's to find those who're exceptional to give them a chance to get into the Hero Course, which is why we decided to make the decision to deduct points!"

Hikari in the midst of grinding the twenty pointer's face into the ground , he noticed a small thumb sized red button on the back of its neck. He guessed it was the shut-off button, but before he could try to reach for it, the android grabbed his ankle, tripping him and sending them both careening to a stop on the asphalt.

"But of course," Principal Nezu gestured to the panel of buttons and the very big glaring red one, to which one of the teachers in the room followed his implication, pressing it and activating the Zero Pointer, "in the face of an overwhelming odds such as this or our other Zero Pointer, That is when people tend to show their true colors and follow their instincts."

The ground shook as Hikari got up, scratches bleeding and bruises aching all across his body, but despite this, that rush of blood roaring in his ears, heart beating like thunder in his chest, this was a high that couldn't be replicated in any other situation for him, so he smiled like a maniac and spotted something poking out of the debris from the surrounding destruction.

"Separating out the natural born warriors,"

The android was getting back up all the same, it's once unscathed dome now scrapped with ugnly grays and pieces of it cracked and chipped off, as it calculated a plan of action. But that was instantly interrupted with a slam across its face by Hikari's new weapon he picked up off the ground. A sturdy piece of steel rod that had concrete stuck to one end of it, smashed the stone into its face, again and again, his hands getting more and more blistered as he hit with harder force each time before the Android finally caught the rod, glaring at him with it's metal skull exposed.

It reached for him but Hikari kicked it back down, burying it under his foot and street, before kicking it across the face with his other, feeling instant regret as he a spear of pain erupted from his newly dislocated ankle from doing so. He needed room, quickly reaching and grabbing a new piece of robot debris, he got on his one good foot, ramping up his voltage use to 60%, and hit a home run square on the android's chest, sending it flying down the street like a bullet as Hikari started his haste recovery.

"The intelligence gatherers, who're able to assess the situation in seconds,"

Miki was running as fast as she could from the earth shaking footsteps of the zero pointer, when something came flying from across the street and slammed into a building. The combination of the bullet slammed into the side of it and the earthquakes, it collapsed in a second, but not before Miki saw a black blur leaving behind a trail of sparks, almost too fast for her to catch, was in a collision course with the building. She reached out her hands and the Nezha suddenly careened over to her, narrowly dodging the falling building.

"The decision makers who are able to find the perfect opportunities at the right time,"

The twenty pointer punched it's arm out from the rubble, clawing itself free to Miki and Nezha's horror and confusion when suddenly, the dust from all around it swirled from all the cracks between debris and encased it in a great ball of dust. The brown haired examinee from earlier, riding on a flying dust cloud, dive bombed down at the ball as he opened up a tiny tunnel directly to its shutoff button.

"And those who are able to be right where they're needed exactly when they need to be."

The side of the dust ball exploded as the android broke free once again, reaching around the back of it's head to grab the student's arm and ratcheted him down to earth. He would've slammed into the ground had it not been for Nezha rushing in and cushioning his blow. But the cushioning almost deadened his momentum, and he slid to a stop in perfect view to see the massive gargantuan size of the Zero Pointer directly above them, and the twenty pointer smashing it's way free from it's dust prison.

"But above all, in order to find the best, rising to a hopeless situation is the mark of the heroic spirit that is needed this day and age."

Nezha and the other examinee scrambled to get away from the Zero Pointer and the next moment they were safely further down the street, right next to Miki who was just as confused as they were. They all saw a lightning bolt streaking away from them and back into the heat of the chaos at the base of the Zero Pointer.

The ball of dust crumbled and fell with the Twenty Pointer, shaking off its sensors and saw Hikari suddenly appear directly under it, catching the smallest frame by frame glimpse of an ear to ear smile, questionably made metal knuckle dusters, presumably created from scraps of metal with a combination of superspeed and beating the metal into the shape he wanted, before being introduced to Hikari's personalized Super Move.

"Blitz BARRAGE!" he screamed to himself, ramping his speed up to a highly dangerous 70%, and slammed his fist into the metal skelton's chest, knuckles bruising and screaming as Hikari just kept punching without a care, finally finishing his juggling with one final punch, smashing his fist into it's cratered steel chest, and launching it directly back into the air, like a missile, slamming into the giant head of the Zero Pointer, before finally resting in a magnificent explosion erupted out of its face.

Hikari fell onto his back, panting from exhaustion, relishing in the aching and searing pain that afflicted his muscles, "Take . . that . . . . Sawa. can't destroy a zero pointer my ass."

He forced his face to relax from the smiling, and let out one final exhale he suddenly noticed the groaning and screaming of the Zero Pointer, crumbling down and aiming to fall apart on the block that Hikari was still lay on.

"CRAP," Hikari scrambled to his feet, and took one great stride into the ground again when his legs were struck with a bolt of agony. He could sense it then, his electrical stores were nearly depleted, and on top of that, his ankle was set literal seconds ago. He'd need to get running to get that charge back up and run as fast as he could.

So he scrambled up once again, starting off to a limping sprint normally, the groaning and debris of the gargantuan robot rained all around him but that was nothing compared to the voice running in his head like a train set he used to have as a kid, repeating, "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!"

The ground swayed under his feet violently, so he made the mistake of looking behind him to see that the body of the Zero Pointer finally made contact with the ground, with the rest of its body soon to follow.

Hikari quickly turned back and felt lightning starting to spark off of him. "Almost back to minimum power!" he ran even harder with the adrenaline pumping in his veins, looking at the zero pointer's length. The only percent of speed he'd have available would be at least 15%, it'd be harrowingly close for comfort.

That's when he heard the zero pointer's groaning suddenly escalate into a screech, as it suddenly careered to the side, almost suspended as Miki thrust her arms out and nose spurting out a jet of blood from trying to lift it to buy Hikari as much time as possible before collapsing, only able to buy a second. But a second was all he needed.

The world slowed and he bolted to the finish, almost far away enough from the danger. Or at least. Almost. Because the next second, the Zero pointer's arm came crashing down from the other side of the street, cutting off his path, and the arm aiming to crush him into the ground, and it was moving too fast for him to react to in time.

That's when he was abruptly grabbed and violently yanked backwards at a speed that surpassed his current one, the world turning into a blur.

He tried looking at who grabbed him but he felt his body start burning up again, and the world came crashing back into his ears. The Zero Pointer's arm slammed into the building, narrowly clipping his feet, spraying him with dust and pebbles, metal snapping, and concrete shattering, his ears rang, drowning everything out as he tumbled back onto solid ground. His whole body felt like one giant bruise, constant pain numbing every other sensation, and he didn't really want to open his eyes, or move because of it.

But he did anyways, searching for whoever it was that just saved him, only catching a glimpse of something pitch black emerging from the shadows to look at him. "Who-"

It didn't say anything, and even as Hikari's vision focused on it, it seemed to still just be a black shadow that was standing halfway in the wall.

"I wasn't here."

"Wa- wha-"

"I wasn't here. Simple as that. I saved you, you now owe me one, and now I want you not to tell anyone I was here." From what he could tell from the voice alone, whoever they were was young, maybe his age even, but nothing else gave anything else away.

"We'll be seeing each other soon." The shadowed figure walked back into the shadows on the wall, vanishing as if they were never there.


	4. Episode 4 - Fowl Fillers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the exciting events of the Entrance Exam, Hikari takes some time off to try and relax and not constantly stress about whether he did well on it or not.

"Hime, I think I failed." Hikari confessed as he lay across the couch and staring at the roof as Hime sat on the floor, playing games with Hoshi, who managed to get himself a good ten minutes of free time before he goes back to work on his college studies.

"Failed!?" Hime shouted in disbelief as she proceeded to throw Hoshi's character in their game off a cliff, "Didn't you say you destroyed all the robots?"

"Yeah well, the thing is," Hikari cringed as he thought back to the exam, which took place give or take a week ago, and remembering a conversation he had immediately after his near death experience.

His knuckles screaming and bleeding as he climbed over the Zero Pointer's arm only to almost falling back down when he got tackled in a hug by Miki, tears streaming down her face as she feared the worst, Nezha helping them down while wondering how Hikari survived that, and the brown haired dust quirk guy nowhere to be seen. None of them seemed to have seen that shadow person, and either way he didn't feel much need to tell them about it.

"I don't remember you being this much of an idiot," Miki blubbered, wiping the blood off her nose, woozily steadying herself from the ordeal of lifting even a single part of that gargantuan mech. "Why the hell did you even go back? And don't say it was impulse or I will slap you with the giant robot."

"I made a bet with Sawa about that Zero Pointer."

". . . . . . You just wanted to destroy that Thirty point robot."

Miki pitched forwards suddenly, but she was caught by Hikari, who sat her upright, "Alright, you can scold me all you want after you get proper rest ok?"

"Screw that," Miki shiveringly massaged her head as the migraine started setting in, "I can scold you and have a migraine at the same time. Watch me."

Miki gripped her head as her head swelled with pain as Hikari whipped off his jacket and draped it over her.

Nezha sat himself down and grabbed his mechanical legs, pushing and twisting a few pieces of it and popped it off his thigh, inspecting it thoroughly, "Well did you at least press the button on it? It was on the back of it's neck right? I mean I saw the other guy dive down at it from the back so-"

"Did I what-now?"

"Press the button. . . on the robot. Present Mic said that you had to press the button in order to receive the points." Nezha's question was answered by Hikari's silence and the look of a sudden and horrified realization. He quickly added, "But you earned a lot of points didn't you? Enough to pass?"

Again, Hikari remained silent, and Nezha was given another answer. He didn't know how many robots that he destroyed, and in effect, he didn't know how many points he got total.

Hikari reluctantly turned to Miki, still massaging her temples and answered before he asked, "All I have in your head is you listening to music, swinging around an arm like a bat, and air guitar. Now let me tend to my screaming brain in some kind of peace."

Nezha's eyebrows bounced at the unexpected fun fact but Hikari wasn't so easygoing about it, pinching his nose in frustration, bringing him back to the present day, again pinching his nose in frustration.

Everything he'd only ever dreamed about was in jeopardy just because of his own idiocy, his stomach churning the more that he thought of it, sparking red bolts of frustration off his head as he watched Hime and Hoshi's game. And in the same short sightedness, he didn't really apply to any other hero schools aside from UA as a backup and it was far too late to try and apply.

"But you destroyed all the robots," Hime repeated sternly, "They HAVE to let you in for that!"

"Well hopefully they do take that into consideration," Hoshi added, sighing after Hime won yet another game, "Otherwise your rebellion against dad and his allowing you to go to UA is just gonna go to waste."

"Thank you Hoshi, for that reminder."

"Oh Hik, you're gonna be fine," Hikari's mom reassured, bringing around a bowl of cut and skinned sweet apples for them to eat. "And even if you don't make it to UA, you could still try to be a hero on your own after high school!"

"That's a little late to start a hero career don't ya think?"

"Well, better late than never!" Hina cheerfully countered as she stabbed a fork into an apple for Hikari, "And speaking of late, didn't you have plans with your friends today?"

A spark of lightning came off his head once again as Hikari remembered that he and the gang were celebrating Onaka's recovery and leaving of the hospital and, as Hikari might have suspected, to try and take his mind off of worrying about the UA applications, and his feelings about Kin applying. A distraction that he welcomed whole-heartedly for once.

Hikari sprung up, vanishing in a blur of lightning, reappearing the next instant, in more casual attire, giving his mom a kiss on the cheek, taking an apple for the go, a quick pat on Hime's head before rushing out.

"Oh, Tell Miki I said hi!" Hina called after her son futility. Just like her husband, always rushing out the door without pause or any other kind of consideration.

She sighed, taking a moment to watch Hoshi lose yet another game to Hime, gently reminding, "Hoshi, you have schoolwork don't you?"

Hoshi didn't even so much as sigh as he put the controller down and got up, patting Hime on the head and leaving to get back to his work.

After the entrance exams, Miki told Hikari that she and her family would be staying in Shibuya until they got the news about the results of the exam. The gang in their great wisdom and knack for opportunities, thought to also invite Miki and her brothers back with a big ol party. Was party the right word for this?

Unfortunately, Kozat wasn't going to be able to make it. He needed to take a train across Japan to get over to Shiketsu in time for their entrance exams and such. And from how much Kozat was stressing over it the past week, it seemed like Shiketsu wasn't allowing anyone to be late for any reason.

Hikari zipped between the traffic and weaved through the congested sidewalks, finally skidding to a stop in front of a small house, barely looking two stories tall, it's sides covered in overgrown ivy and a newly cleaned name plate by the gate reading, "Koji."

Since Miki's parents moved around so often for their work, they had about four other properties to their name.

Fond memories of his trips down to her house to be with her flashed by. He always came by with a game console that he borrowed from Kin, sometimes he brought over snacks, or even just textbooks so she'd help him study for tests.

He opened the gate and walked down all too familiar walkway and stood before the dark brown door.

He rapped his knuckles speedily against the door, making a buzzing sound rather than a knock and accidentally leaving a small scorch mark from the lightning and hoped that nobody would notice.

He cussed under his breath, licking his finger and rubbing the mark in futile hopes to wipe it off or something when the door suddenly lurched open to the face of her father.

"Yes yes, everything's ready! The meeting is gonna go- Oh Hikari!!" Hashi Koji jumped when he spun to see Hikari almost right in his face. His business suit had been thrown on hastily and he held a folder and beagle together in one hand with his other hand on the door. His pink eyes still as scarily vibrant and warm, gray hairs dulled his once bright blonde hair and stubble had begun to grow in around his chin. Most noticeably, he had a thin gray metal band around his head tucked under his neat and tidy hair.

[Quirk - Mind Reading: Hashi Koji is able to read the minds of anybody in a large area around himself. He is unable to read people if they have metal around their heads, and he is unable to hear their thoughts if he has metal around his own]

"Miki really wasn't kidding when she said you grew taller," Hashi remarked as he reached up, patting his head and sizing him up. "Last I remember, you only came up to my shoulders."

"I was thirteen then."

"Doesn't matter, you got tall," He leaned back inside calling out, "Miki Honey!? Hikari's-"

"Here I know. I heard him coming," Miki came out from behind her dad, sporting a cutesy bright yellow and frilly sweater with a simple brown leather purse hanging over her shoulder.

She turned off the phone in her hand, shoving it into the pocket of her dark blue jeans asking Hikari, "Are we good to go?"

Before Hikari could respond, her father asked anxiously, "You're not taking your headband?"

On cue, a silver headband floated out of her purse, spinning around as she answered reassuringly, "I'm gonna be ok dad."

"But the two of you are going to the mall right? There's gonna be a lotta people and if you're not going to wear it-"

"Dad," She gave him one final firm look of, "Its going to be alright. Don't worry."

Hashi sighed, trusting his daughter and giving a stern look at Hikari, "You behave yourself out there alright? I mean it."

"I'll do my best."

Hashi knew that was the best answer he was going to get, so he watched Hikari and Miki walk back down the walkway before closing the door, leaving Hikari and Miki to themselves and getting back to his business meeting.

After a moment of silence standing outside the gate, Hikari piped up curiously, "Gordon and Ozaki couldn't make it?"

"Well Gordon said that today was his workout day and he might come later if he finishes up early. And Ozaki's at his therapist."

"Oh cool," Hikari didn't feel like it was really his place to know why Ozaki had a therapy appointment, but hoped that he was getting through whatever he was going through.

"Well alright, we can get there early," Hikari bent over and offered a piggyback ride but just Miki walked past him casually.

"I thought we'd . . walk," Miki answered Hikari's confusion, shrugging and hid her face as she felt her face heat up a little bit. "I haven't been back in a while so I kinda wanna do some sightseeing? Just a little I mean, just to see what's changed and what hasn't."

"Oh. Ok yeah sure, ok we can . . walk." Normally Hikari detested going slow and often used his quirk for, quite literally, everything. But he convinced himself easily, the occasional slowing down wasn't the worst thing in the world.

As they strolled through and out of the neighborhood and into the clogged streets of Shibuya. Sharing stories of the two years. Hikari, the notable fights he's been in, busting drug gangs mostly on accident most times, his little sister Hime's first day of school, and of course the obligatory complaint of, "How annoying my old man's become as of late."

Miki on the other hand, didn't do much of the sharing. Listening to the whole time, on the excuse of nothing much happening really. She made new friends across the country, all of which she still kept in contact with but as she claimed, "Nothing anywhere as exciting as your spats happened to me fortunately."

"Hisoo used to tell me that," Hikari blurted out as a passing remark, "I'd ask her, How's your day been? And she'd just tell me, nothing as exciting as what you'd probably been through."

Miki stared at Hikari for a few moments before telling him almost incredulously, "You miss her."

"No I . . . " His shoulders sagged as he admitted, "A little bit. . . . ok yeah I miss her."

Hikari tilted his head around as he explained aloud, "I know that Hisoo took advantage of me and just lied to get close to me so that she could, 'get me out of the way' or whatever for the drug gang she was a part of. But I can't help but remember the fun that we had together and think about whether all of it was a lie or not. Just to get me out of the way, and I can't help but wonder how this could've been avoided and if I wasn't-"

"Don't finish that sentence." Miki sternly glared right into Hikari's face reaffirmed, "If you weren't who you were then you wouldn't have met in the first place. And whether it was a lie or not, it doesn't matter."

Miki put her hand on his shoulder firmly and said with incredibly strong authority, "It ISN'T your fault that this happened. It's not because of the fights you constantly get into or your side hobby of a vigilante. Don't put the blame on yourself."

She grimaced as she continued on, digging deep into both herself and Hikari as he hung onto every word, "You're gonna be hurting for a while, but that hurting is going to go away eventually. After all, you were real close to her,"

Miki's face softened as she searched through his memories, "And if it's any consultation for you. I don't think she was too good at her job of being a backstabber."

"What do ya mean?"

"I mean that she didn't want to kill you when the truth came out. Unlike the rest of her posse. If that means anything to you."

Hikari looked off into the distance, feeling a relief as a weight was lifted slightly off his chest.

"Thanks Miki."

She patted Hikari's shoulder some more, "Never a problem. Also, you forgot what her quirk was?"

"I thought it was just bubbles, not actual balls filled with water."

"Same difference-" Miki's head suddenly jerked around, eyes filled with sudden panic, searching for the source of something.

"Miki?"

"S- Somebody's- In Danger!" Miki gripped her head trying to keep her own thoughts organized as Hikari scanned around, lightning arcing off of his body as he ran through the crowd around them, frantically searching for anybody in any kind of danger. A boy was crying about dropping his ice cream, a men and women on their way to wherever they were going this weekend, but nobody was in the back allies, nobody assaulted, nothing. Everyone was more or less ok.

So Hikari ended up back at Miki's side the next second, asking, "Where?!"

Miki didn't respond, so Hikari gripped her shoulders in an attempt to try to ground her, "MIKI!"

She finally looked at Hikari, deeply drenched in fear, she responded, "They're falling."

"Falling?!" Blue arcs of lightning flew off of Hikari as the world completely stopped.. He repeated the word over and over in his head, "falling falling, Miki's range of mind reading is fifty feet, so that means-"

Hikari looked up scanning around the towering buildings above his head to see that there was in fact somebody falling ungraciously fast down.

Hikari didn't waste any time, jumping up to an immediate 70% running to the tower closest to the person falling, dodging the various employees in it, kicking open the doors to stairways and hauling himself up the stairs.

Past one floor he kept running to the window to see where the person was before he ran up another floor, repeating over and over until he was at the right floor to see the person still falling fast, but things seemed off. No time to think about that damnit FOCUS! Catch them wrong and you break something.

Hikari grabbed an unoccupied chair, swinging it into the window, shattering it into pieces and clearing himself a clear exit free of the glass shards.

He ran back once again, throwing the chair aside before sprinting down the hall once again, keeping his eyes on the person falling and praying to whatever was out there, that he did this right.

One foot in front of the other before running out of runway, putting all his strength into the jump, soaring across the street below, arms extended out, catching their neck and knees.

In his world of near frozen time, he started looking at his landing zone which was just a store across the street at least five stories lower than he anticipated, but then accidentally found himself gazing at the face of who he had just caught.

Her face was scrunched with effort, probably using her quirk, to stop herself from falling. But despite how she hard she was focusing, her face was, for lack of a better term, pretty. Her eyes were lined with a bold and bright scarlet, eyes a soft daisy yellow, cheeks rosy and red and her neck length short hair was an extreme light baby blue that seemed to- Wait we're still falling, FOCUS HIKARI GODDAMNIT!

He held her against his body as he tried rolling midair, using his own body to brace for the crash, when all of a sudden a sheet of white blinded him.

He passed through the cloud as you would but the girl he was clinging crashed through it, and he felt the two of them slow down, almost like they just crashed through the floor. Well, she did all the crashing. Honestly it was a miracle that he managed to keep a hold of her with what all the sudden jerk from hitting the clouds.

They tumbled through the air, switching places and she struck her arm out quickly, summoning more clouds, and she crashed into all of them all the way down to the building's roof.

The two of them lay sprawled on top of each other, a mess of groaning pain and very bruised shoulders, Hikari vertical across her abdomen and his face plastered onto the floor.

He was pushed off quickly as the girl desperately pleaded, "Nonono I still got time don't I?"

Hikari shook off his distortion and watched her rush to the edge of the roof and jerk to a stop.

She pulled out her phone and stared at it for a few increadibly long seconds but then started kicking the vent next to her, screaming, "GOD DAMN SUNOVA-"

Hikari watched her fit getting slightly more concerned and honestly, a little afraid. But he mustered his courage and asked, "Hey uh. You alright?"

She stopped kicking the vent and screamed into the sky, to which it responded with darkening and rumbles of distant thunder.

"I will take that as a no."

She turned to Hikari, accusing with rage dripping in her voice, "This is your fault."

"I'm sorry how?"

She seemingly was about to go on a screaming rant, vein pretty much popping out of her head but at the last second, pulled herself together and apologized, "Sorry I'm just having the absolute worst day right now."

She kicked the vent one last time, making a very angry dent in the steel, "I was supposed to take a train west so I'd make it on time for exams but I missed the damn train!"

Hikari peered into the distance, the only thing that he could really see that was out of the way of the buildings was the train station that was pretty far off, he had to squint to see the trains rolling out of the station.

"Hey now," Hikari attempted to diffuse the situation, "I'm not really sure that the train you need left already I mean it's what-"

She thrust a phone in his face, displaying the train tracks and an estimated wait time for the next train was missing and replaced with a very red lettering above the wait time, "Shut down for the day due to accident on tracks."

"If I can't make it to Shiketsu on time for the exams, they'll close the doors and aren't going to take ANY excuses for why I couldn't make it. Ohh I'm gonna-"

On cue with her words, the sky darkened even further as her light blue hair started floating up with a small hurricane starting to develop around her. Hikari even felt a pattern of light rain stinging his head.

"Hey!" Hikari put up his hands, palms out and asking as casually as he could, "What were you doing falling from the sky?"

The weather changes abruptly came to a standstill. The wind died down and the light start of a rainstorm with it as she tightened her lips and looked to the ground in contemplation.

After a few moments of silence she sighed, "A . . goose."

". . . I'm sorry a goose?"

"Look I woke up late because my alarm didn't go off, had to take the fastest way to the train station which meant running at a higher altitude, I got distracted and I didn't see a goose so I ran into it."

"Sounds like-"

"Don't."

"Fowl play."

"I will punch you."

"Your welcome by the way," Hikari waved his hands at the broken window up five stories above them, "For catching you before ya became a splat on the pavement."

"I could've handled that myself."

"I'm not going to say I doubt that but I doubt that."

"Look guy, can you go away or something because if you're going to say something like 'you owe me a favor' then you can shove it up-"

"Oh I don't care about that, I just care that I don't get rained on."

"Rained o-" She put two and two together realizing, "Oh. You don't mix well with water?."

"Yep," Hikari nodded in confirmation, "Too much and I'll pretty much have a heart attack."

The rain clouds for the most part dissipated, "Sorry, I- The weather- I control the weather and it's twitchy when it comes to emotions and im having a very shitty day-."

"Nono it's alright," Hikari suddenly had a spark of genius, whipping out his phone and texting furiously while asking the girl, "You're heading to Shiketsu right?"

"I am-"

"Great greatgreatgreat," Hikari's phone dinged and he turned back to her, "I can help you with getting there."

"Yeah no thanks," She declined, "I get you're fast, you literally came out of nowhere and tried catching me, but I know I can't handle another one of those superspeed. Also im not real sure you can run all the way to Shiketsu-"

"I'm gonna take you to a train station, my friend is also going to Shiketsu and his train still hasn't arrived yet so you could hitch a ride over."

Her glare dripped with suspicion. "Hm. And I'm just supposed to take your word for it?"

"What do I have to gain from tricking you?"

"Kidnapping."

"I doubt you're worth much ransom money."

She looked more conflicted about that than anything else that Hikari said so far, but she said one last thing. "I don't even know your name."

"Hikari Hirakata. You?"

She hesitated but ultimately answered, "Kumotta Kushi."

"Well Kumotta," Hikari warned, "Everyone's first time is gonna suck so sorry in advance."

Kumotta was swept off her feet and knew exactly what it was like for a bullet to fly through the air if it had a mind of it's own. Her eyes dried in seconds, air snatched from her lungs and lips dried from the blast of air that she underwent. The world melted away into one giant screeching blur of colors and every noise had suddenly gone silent for precious few seconds.

When the world had righted itself and she could see again, Hikari was standing in front of a train platform right next to Kozat, who jumped shouting, "JESUS- Stop doing that!"

"Yeah yeah, Kozat Kumotta, Kumotta Kozat. I think the two of you guys are going to be classmates by the end of your exams."

Kumotta didn't return the greeting, instead choosing to run to the closest trash can and promptly throw up the remains of her breakfast.

Kozat looked at Kumotta retching and back at Hikari, face asking the question without needing to move a muscle.

"It's . . . well I don't really know how to explain this but." Hikari explained what happened on the way to the mall. Him and Miki walking the whole way, her hearing Kumotta's thoughts, and how he had caught her from falling out of the sky and of course, how she was going to miss the deadline for Shiketsu's entrance exam.

"So yeah. That's why she's here."

"Huh," Kozato took a moment to process before asking, "So boss, did you ask her if she was an angel-"

"Koz no."

"Would've been your only chance to pull off that line."

"Well she doesn't think so."

Kumotta walked back over just as the train pulled into the station and the doors opened up and a quiet rush of people got in quickly.

Kozat followed the crowd, quickly securing himself a spot on the train car as Kumotta stared at Hikari.

A moment of her piercing yellow stare and she turned away with a hmph.

"You ever need my help again just call."

"I don't have your number so I couldn't even if I wanted to for whatever inane reason."

"Oh well I coul-"

The doors shut before he could tell her anything more and the train rolled out of the station, leaving him alone and dejected.

Oh well. Wasn't much that he could do now. So he ran back to Miki, wishing Kozat and Kumotta good luck in their exams, maybe they could meet up again at some point and talk some more. Or not, after all, the relationship between UA and Shiketsu wasn't one full of friendliness but mostly trying to one up each other constantly. He was ok with that too. The prospect of fighting Kozat again got him excited, as he thought about it more and more. He always was a tricky one to fight against with controlling gravity and whatnot.

But his imagination of his future battles was interrupted for the rest of the day when he finally met up with everybody else.

Arcade games were played, All the mario karts won by Onaka, table hockey played to ridiculous levels of speed, prizes won, and many bowling pins knocked over.

Everybody had a story to tell Miki, and by extension Onaka, about what happened in their absence. Sawa finally learning how to cook with the help of his quirk, Isobe wanting to study medicine since he's played a sort of medic for everybody for the past few years, Jo's taking up of Muay Thai classes that Hikari's been helping her train with, and Jima showing off a little bit of his vastly improved coffee-making skills.

Onaka even contributed with some adventures, like the time that she fed puku her mouth stomach a car wheel among other normally indigestible things and also even occasionally joining the gang in their slightly illegal adventures of stealing fireworks to set off for their own party at one point.

The hours went by quickly until they all had to say goodbye to each other and go home.

Sawa hopped on his motorcycle with Isobe hitching a ride, Jo's parents picked her up, Onaka went on her own promising to stay safe this time and be extra vigilant against potential kidnappers. Jima and Miki were carried home by way of the Hikari express, to which Mikimanaged to keep her lunch down.

Hikari had barely stepped back inside his home when Hime damn near tackled him back down the stairs, shouting, "HIKARI! IT CAME!"

He regained a proper footing and peeled Hime off of him as his mother, as equally hyper as Hime, held up an envelope, stamped with UA's symbol.

Leading to Hikari sitting in his room, staring at the damn thing as if it was going to disappear from his view. Even though he and his mom were holding it, it didn't feel real. Like it was a hallucination made real, but here it was. The cold paper sitting on his desk as his family waited outside eagerly for the news.

He felt that the draft was distracting so he shut his window but regretted it since the room was now simply too silent for him to want to open it. The lights felt too bright so he turned the lights off, then back on as it was too dark, then at half which felt good enough as he realized he was just trying to find ways to put off opening the envelope.

Thoughts raced in his mind at a thousand miles an hour. Did UA send mail to tell students they didn't make it in? I mean how else would they do it, but would they do it with the holo-disc or on paper?

He felt up the paper and felt the disc dead smack in the center of it. He tightened his lips and took a singular deep breath. No point in stressing over the unknown.

So he ripped open the envelope and the disc clattered onto his desk, rolling a little bit before warbling to a stop, and nothing happened.

Hikari squinted at it in confusion. Something was supposed to happen, right? Whether it was rejection or acceptance?

More seconds went by and the disc remained stubbornly silent oddly enough. Hikari's earlier dread about facing whatever decision that UA made turned into confusion. They sent him a broken holo-disc.

"Is there a button on this thing or something?" Hikari asked nobody as he picked it up and flipped it over when it suddenly blinded him as the hologram sprung to life.

"Hello Hikari Hirakata!" Principal Nezu greeted happily. Was he a mouse? A weird bear? Didn't matter since Hikari had to blink out the stars in his eyes.

"This is Principal Nezu speaking! I trust that you can clearly hear me through the projection, and there are many students to send these to! But you are an interesting case, so I'm going to spend just a little more time explaining how you'll proceed from here!"

Nezu's mouse head seemed to grimace, it was a little hard to tell since he looked like a mouse and all, but he continued, "As you almost certainly know already, your records are quite filled with over a dozen of all sorts of illegal activities, mostly regarding the fighting of criminals without a proper license. At UA high, we simply do not condone any kinds of Vigilantism."

Hikari felt his throat close up and his head dropped with shame. Yep. His father was right. UA wouldn't accept a delinquent like him, even if he performed well on the entrance exam.

"That is to say, you performed admirably on your exams and I am pleased to say that you've made it in!"

Hikari's face suddenly went wide. Did he hear that right? He made it?

The holographic presented a video beside him, showing off a montage of recordings, dozens of robots all dismantled in seconds by lightning bolt before darting off, jumping to different street cameras, a flash of lightning and a pile of ruined robots following instantly after.

"Normally the maximum amount of points you could get on the exam is sixty points, a limit you easily made. But as you may or may not have already known," The footage suddenly switched to a lightning bolt launching a human sized missile up into the Zero Pointer's underside. "Thirty points were deducted for destroying the Thirty Pointer. However, we grade on two fronts my boy. Combat, as well as rescue. And rescuing you did!"

The footage changed again, showing the brown haired dust guy getting caught by Hikari, dust guy, Nezha, and Miki being rushed out from under the Zero Pointer.

"And you regained the points you lost for the most part. But point is Hirakata, you are, as of now, a new and enrolled student of UA!"

Hikari felt streams of small electricity welling up around his eyes as his lips turned into a gigantic grin that refused to settle as he watched Nezu reach out, offering his paw, "Now young Hirakata, come join your Hero Academia. Instructions and additional information in the papers included with this projection!"

With that, the projection shut off, leaving Hikari in silence and the sudden realization that he accidentally ripped the envelope and most of the letters inside said envelope.

Shit.


	5. Episode 5 - The Lesson of the Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hikari and Kin have their first day at UA, Accompanied by Nezha, they get to meet their classmates and new teachers working alongside Aizawa! But the first day presents major troubles for them and instantly, Hikari and Kin's friendships are put at odds!

The following months were a hectic blur. The thing that stuck out the most was the celebrations that followed his acceptance.   
Upon telling his family what the letter contained and it’s good news that followed it, his mom went a little overboard and arranged a giant dinner with all of Hikari’s most favorite foods, which wouldn’t have been too bad if only she didn’t order enough for a family of bears.  
“Blue thunder, Racing blue, Streak, Sonic!” Hime spun out like an online name generator rapidly pressing the generate button over and over during the entirety of dinner. Even Hoshi was absent mindedly throwing in a few names into the mix himself. His father never came in for that dinner. Something about working late at his agency was going to hold him up till the next day but Hikari didn’t care, he was probably going to turn the whole thing into another lecture is what he told himself.  
But later that week was when celebrations got a little out of control. Kozat had returned from his Shiketsu exams, and had gotten his acceptance letter, at that same time, Jo and Sawa got their own acceptance to UA, tho to Class B instead of A much to their mild disappointment. To celebrate, the gang had rented out a room at a Karaoke bar and sang their hearts out as well as drink themselves silly since Sawa had snuck in alcohol he saved for the occasion.  
Hikari was adamant that once they drank what Sawa had brought, they were gonna get cut off and no more booze from that point onwards. Unfortunately for them, Sawa had brought six packages, one for every arm that Sweatpants had. Needless to say, he was pretty sure that almost everyone was a little loopy by the end with the exceptions of Onaka, who didn’t feel very comfortable with the alcohol, and Jo, who swore off drinking after she accidentally sipped her dad’s drink thinking it was tea.  
When the party was all but done, Hikari ran everyone back to their homes, making sure they were safely back before running back to his own home and stared up at his roof. Planning to himself what his morning routine was going to be. Wake up, get dressed in the uniform they sent over, eat breakfast and go to the train. Maybe run along the train. That was the plan, but something was missing from that whole equation.  
And that something was Kin. He hadn’t spoken to her in months, which was already worrying enough, and she hadn’t returned any of his texts or calls which was really just driving it up to the max. How he felt about her going to UA felt the same as before, if not stronger. He knew that he had to knock some kind of sense into her, but a word from Jima convinced him to at least rethink the option..  
“Hikari, a quick word” he said, breath stinking terribly as they came up on the entrance to his cafe. He had drunk one can of alcohol and thrown into the deep end of drunkenness halfway through the can. Hikari added a mental note that Jima was a lightweight for the future.  
He gingerly touched Hikari’s shoulder and told him as straight out as he could as the blush of beer colored his face, “Listen Hik-hic-, listen. I want you to be able to take care of yourself.”  
“Jima you’re drunk-”  
“Nonononononono listen. As your friend,” Jima held down his stomach and continued quickly before he would hurl his dinner, “As your friend, I want the best for you. And, well. Try as you might but- you kinda rely on me a lot.”  
Debatable, Hikari didn’t come to him for every little decision, just for the occasional venting that he needed or just general hangouts. Though he did talk to Jima about personal stuff quite a lot. More than the rest of his gang and looked to him for a lot of advice. . . . ok fine, maybe Jima’s right.  
“Not just me- you rely on the rest of us, kinda alot. And I’m conzer- Concert- Worried. About you going to UA cause i’m not going to be around to help you out with whatever.”  
Hikari didn’t say anything, just helping Jima into the cafe as Jima continued on, “You got a lotta baggage, surprisingly you whine a lot, and honestly if it wasn’t for me you’d’ve probably been in a worse place.”  
Harsh but probably truer than Hikari told himself.  
“Which is why I want you to make a lotta friends at UA. or just find one. One is more than plenty.”  
Hikari lifted Jima up the stairs as he listened to his drunken wisdom continue on, suddenly remembering, “You’re going with Kin! Well the two of you should be fine. Or maybe not. You worry like- A lot man. Wait, is that the word? . . . . maybe it's more controlling.”  
Hikari pretty much tossed Jima into his bed, who didn’t really complain too much about being tossed like so and instead sunk into his bed. “It’s alright to be worried Hik. just . . try not to . . .” and Jima was out just like that, on the top of his blanket, still in his jacket and jeans.  
After at least putting Jima under the covers and changing him into sweatpants so he’d be comfortable sleeping, we come back to him back to the uneventful staring at his roof. It felt like he had been staring at the roof the whole night, but he knew that only a few minutes had passed.  
It had only been two minutes since he laid on his bed, three minutes since he got home, and there was no hint of sleepiness attacking him. He could spend his time thinking at superspeed the whole night but it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.  
So he decided to do something to get somewhere on his own. He turned on the lights and picked up his phone, opening up his messages to Kin, all of which left on read. He wondered if she was even up this late only to answer his question seconds later. Of course she’s still awake, Kin had a seemingly adamant regime against sleep. She’s afraid of the darkness and the terrors it hid, but as childish as it seemed, she made a very serious effort to make sure that she’d spend most of her time in bright lights. He shuddered to think of the electricity bills.  
He exited from the messages and noticed a notification saying, “Kindawg1301 is streaming, I ACCEPTED INTO UA: SPECIAL Q&A!”.   
About a thousand viewers were tuned into the stream, as Kin was currently answering a question. In the background of her camera was her brightly lit room displaying all the anime figures, posters, a body pillow, swords and mound of sleeping bags. In front of her was a still warm cup of instant noodles as she played Super Smash Ultimate, hands tucked underneath the oversized gray sweater she wore hiding her arms completely as she tracked the battle onscreen.  
“-the worst thing I ever ate was two bags of popcorn and hot sauce. So if you’re looking to ruin your week, go ahead and do so-s”  
Her character got spiked into the blast zone and her mood flipped like a switch, “OH Sunova- He’s teabagging me! What have I done to earn this disrespect- Oh wait I did that to him too..”  
She wheezed at her own hypocrisy and went back to fight like it was business as usual, the clacking of the controller overshadowed by her commentary on her opponent’s seemingly expert movements and finally won the game.  
She squealed with victory, “That snake was good, not gonna lie. But we cheesed him out, so just remember guys, cheese will get you the victory.”   
But her joyous mood was brought to a screeching halt with a subscriber’s question pinging overhead, asking in it’s text to speech voice, “Hey Kin, why do you have a white patch of hair it doesn’t seem dyed is it a part of your quirk?”  
As her game finished and waited on the victory screen, she stared at her controller in uncharacteristic silence.  
She snapped out of it cheerily, “Sorry bout that! Thank you for the ten dollar donation, but um- the hair thing is something of a touchy subject for me so all I’m gonna comfortably say is that it is a part of my quirk.”   
She patted down the white patch seemingly without even realizing she was doing it as Hikari watched, his chest feeling full with guilt, but Kin perked up when another subscriber dinged, “Question: Who are you most excited to see at UA and why?”  
“Most excited to see,” Kin repeated, answering instantly with a knowing look and smirk, “Midnight. Cause she hawt.”  
Hikari wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting, Kin was, as she would often call herself, “A woman of culture.”  
Kin snorted as her chat went wild with agreement.   
“Ay we on the same page! But, a serious answer,” Kin sighed sorrowfully, “I’m excited to see my best friend. He also applied to UA and got in pretty easily, or at least that’s what I was told . . . We’re on bad . . . terms right now. Haven’t talked to each other in a good while . . . yep. #feelsbadman.”   
A seed of guilt bloomed in Hikari’s chest when she said that. Seeing her getting all excited then got instantly soured because of him. Some "best friend" he was.  
He turned out of the stream, feeling his exhaustion finally catching up to him as he took a deep breath and swallowed emotions down under. For her sake, he was going to do his best to ignore however he felt about the issue and supported her through it.  
The weeks passed and Hikari would bottle everything up, to put away in the back cupboard of his head, not to be opened for Kin’s sake and hoped that it’d stay that way.  
The morning of UA’s first day of school came and kin fiddled with her uniform angrily, "dang tie-sunova- mooom!? How do you tie this thing?"  
Her mother came into the bathroom, her white sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her blue painter's smock smattered with nearly caked on drying paint. Her purple hair was tied up in a dainty bun atop her head and bright purple eyes looked at the jumbled tangled mess that kin had made of the tie.  
She reached her own gray discolored hands up to undo the mess wondering aloud, "kin-dle how did you even do this? You may as well just go to school like this."  
"Haha mom." Kin looked out the bathroom door and at her packed bags. A freshly bought backpack stuffed with five blank notebooks, a large assortment of color pencils, a sketchbook filled with doodles, her drawing tablet, her trusty custom made laptop, and a suitcase of extra clothes, a sleeping bag, and a duffel bag for all the other toys and posters she wanted to bring with for the dorms.   
"Nervous?" Hanako asked despite already knowing the answer, "or is that just from staying up all night?"  
"'S the bull I drank this morning."red bull I drank this morning,” Kin nodded to the can atop the counter, “Makes me all jittery.”  
“You’re always jittery,” She pointed out, concernedly glancing at the stacked pyramid pile of red bull.   
Her mother’s hands had stopped in the middle of finishing up her tie. Then the sounds of sniffling prompted Kin to ask, “Mom?”  
She waved her hand and resumed fixing the tie, “Oh it's nothing. Just realized that I won’t be around too much to make your ties. And that my little Kindle is going off to be a hero.”  
“Mom, it’s not like I’m gonna die. Or you for that matter.”  
“You’re so grown up so fast,” She started sobbing out, finally finishing up the tie.  
“Mom please don’t cry.”  
“You’ve grown up so much!” She rebutted, tears flowing freely.  
“Mom if you start crying then I’m gonna start crying,” Kin said, crying from her one eye with her mom, hugging her tightly, adding in between sobs, “We’re gonna ruin the uniform and I’m gonna miss the train.”  
“Yo -sniff- you’re right,” Hanako agreed, wiping away her tears and sighing. She patted the spots of uniform that were misaligned and noticed that the actual jacket of her uniform was two sizes too big for Kin’s skinny body.  
“Your uniform-”  
“Oh I ordered it like this.” Kin shimmied her fingers out of the oversized sleeves, wiggling her gray and black lined fingers playfully. “Cause- . . well you know how I feel about this sorta stuff.”  
Hanako nodded in understanding as Kin shirked her hands back into their sleeves, going over to her bags to quickly change off the touchy subject of her skin, asking, “Are you sure that you don’t want us to walk you to the station?”  
“Mom, I know the way over, I walked over just to make sure of that yesterday. And the other two days.”  
“I meant the bags. They’re a little,” She tried lifting one of Kin’s duffel bags which she managed to lift a measy few inches off the floor before it thumped back down. “Heavy.”  
“Well I could use the shrink ray on it,”   
A tablet spontaneously appeared in Kin’s hand and was already reaching her hand in but Hanako quickly stopped, “Nono, if you think you can do it on your own then by all means!”  
Kin slung her backpack of school supplies on and over her shoulders first, then popped up the handle of her suitcase, and finally slinging the duffle bag over her shoulder, standing confidently and making her way up the stairs, out of the basement and into the assaulting light of the sun peering in through the window.  
Her father was just barely putting plates of a still steaming breakfast on the table when he saw that Kin was standing in the doorway.  
“Oh!” Matsuo gasped looking up and down Kin’s uniform and emotionally wiping a tear with his finger, “My little girl’s all grown up.”  
“Dude I don’t want to cry again,” Kin pleaded, feeling on the verge of tears again much to her sympathetic annoyance.  
“Sorry sorry,” He wiped his hands with a towel and took a seat at the table along with Hanako and started eating their breakfast. Hanako took one bite into her Onigiri and cringed, then glared at her husband as he took a bite unaffected.  
Kin sat herself down and awkwardly took a moment to stare at the monstrus plate sized onigiri set in front of her. Her dad was always an odd cook, then looked to the front door, shut and dreadfully inviting.   
She’s made trips out before, as rare as they might be, and she’s always been able to more or less handle herself, depending on your definition of handling it. But this time. She's going out to unfamiliar territory, not coming back either, with a great number of unfamiliar people, and doing it alone. An anxiety welled up inside her as she stared at the door, asking more and more if she was strong enough to go to UA or not.   
When suddenly, she felt her dad’s hand on her sleeve. She snapped out of her funk, seeing dad gently touching her sleeve to get her attention.  
“Hey kiddo. It’s gonna be alright,” he reassured while looking her in the eyes.  
“H- How do you know?” She croaked accidentally, but her dad didn’t even notice. He was cool like that, never pointing out when someone slipped up or voice cracked, but always listening intensely like he didn’t want to miss a single thing in a lecture.   
“What if I’m not good enough for them, or- or nobody likes me? Or everyone starts hating me? Or I get expelled?!”  
“I don’t think that they’re going to expel you on the first day.”   
“Eraserhead did that!” She put her hands on her chest, “Rumor says that he expelled an entire class once! Who’s to say that he won’t do that to me!? I’m just a basement dwelling anime watching nerd with anxiety!”  
“Yeah well you listed everything that’s good about you!” He retorted, adding without pause, “You’re a homeschooled geek who’s freakishly smart. You taught yourself almost everything you know! And if they expel you for that then that’s their loss.”  
At the mention of expulsion Kin’s mood dropped again, getting more anxiety dumped on her head.  
“Expulsion or not,” Hanako shot a sharp look at Matsuo who had started hurriedly apologizing, “Even if you do, we’ll be here to catch you if you fall.”  
She cupped gently Kin’s cheeks in her hands, “Kindle, just remember. You always have a choice, and if you feel that at any moment you can’t take anymore, then our arms will be open for you to come back. But just know that we believe in you. You need to believe in yourself before you do anything else.”  
“. . . . are you sure? That you’ll take me back if I need to come back?” Kin asked hesitantly. Her mother just nodded and Kin felt her depression lift itself, the weight on her chest lifting as the burden of fearing failure was undone ever so much.  
Kin took a deep breath, gently pushing her mother’s hands off her cheeks and grabbing the Onigiri, biting a large chunk off the top, bolstered with a new confidence, cringing instantly and realizing that her father had put too much salty fish inside.  
As she finished up her breakfast and picked up her bags once again, she stopped at the door. Taking a deep breath. Deeper than she’d ever done, and mentally prepared to embark on her journey.  
She turned back to her parents, smiling still and beaming with pride. Proud of their daughter that was finally brave enough to face an utterly terrifying world.  
She tried for a smile, and looked around as she said, “I um. Don’t exactly like saying goodbyes. Soooo, is it alright if I say see you later?”  
“Well, yeah. Of course.”  
“A- Alright then,” Kin went in to hug the both of them one last time, a hug that they gratefully accepted and all of them started tearing up.  
“See you later guys.”  
“We’ll be seeing you kindle.”  
“You’ll do great out there kiddo.”  
And with that, Kin finally carried herself and her luggage outside, ready to face the brave new world.  
At least until she was at the gate of her house and came to the stark horrifying realization that, “My mom wasn’t kiddin, this duffel bag is seriously heavy.”  
Her shoulder felt like it was going to pop off at any second despite barely having slung it on her shoulder a minute ago, so she set it down quickly, accidentally slamming it down which she almost yelped in surprise.  
She quickly opened a side pocket on the duffel bag, quickly pulling out an oval device that looked like one side of a headphone, with a tiny antenna sticking out from the top of it., The bright green cap undamaged much to her relief. She built the dang thing over the course of the past few months in preparation for Hero Course, there was NO way that she was going to have it break right before-   
“Yo.”  
Kin’s hand suddenly grabbed a handheld taser from her jacket’s pocket, sparking it to life and jabbed it at the person behind her in a moment of pure instinctual overreacting fear.  
Hikari caught the taser by it’s head, completely unflinching as it tased the palm of his hand with extreme useless prejudice.  
Hikari stared down at her and she stared back, being the first to make an excuse, “You startled me.”  
“When did you even get a taser?”  
“Always,” she retracted it, stuffing it back into her jacket as she shouldered her backpack, “Never left home without it.”  
Hikari flicked his hand back and forth in a blur of lightning, “Did you ever have to use it on anybody?”  
“No. But better safe than sorry.”  
“Fair enough,” he bobbed his head in agreement as an awkward stare down ensued. Neither of them really knew what to say to each other, or at least Kin didn’t. Hikari had made his thoughts on her choice of future very clear, and disapproving.  
She didn’t want to confront Hikari like this, but she guessed that there wasn’t any other way really. Of course he was going to arrive here, she ghosted him after all and knew that she wouldn't dare miss her first day of UA.  
She braced herself for his scolding worrisome words but he just asked inquisitively, “So is that everything you’re taking to the dorms?”  
She took a second to process his question, realizing it wasn’t anything along the lines of, “I don’t want you in hero course” or something or the other, and stammered, “Uh- I- Yeah?”  
She put the white headphone in her pocket, not trusting her overly heavy duffel bag to keep it safe and not ruin months of work.   
“What’d ya got in there?”  
“Oh. uh- All my volumes of manga, a few figures, computer, and . . . research material.”  
“So you’re bringing your porn?”  
“Well if you’re just gonna announce that shit Blizz,” Kin started, annoyance dripping from her voice, “the appropriate term is hentai. And it's only one volume.”  
“Still gonna definitely get in trouble if you do that,” Hikari grabbed the bag’s straps and slung them over his own shoulder without an issue.  
“Says you, you’re not even wearing proper uniform.”  
Hikari looked down at his own attire. He had ditched the normal UA uniform, stuffed it into his backpack and replaced it with his usual black and blue signature delinquent jacket. Granted he did wear the white undershirt and even managed to properly put on his tie, but there was virtually no way to tell if he was a student or not.  
“So what? The uniform was tacky.” Hikari started walking toward the train station, dragging behind him his own rolling luggage seemingly unbothered by the extra weight and Kin caught up quickly, walking alongside him in silence.  
Hikari had plenty on his mind but he didn’t voice them. A voice in the back of his mind kept telling him, “you know that she’s not going to be able to take the pressure. She couldn’t do that back in elementary school. What makes you think she’ll do it here?”  
He shoved that voice back down angrily and walked up the stairs of the station, at her side in a persisting silence, then waiting at the platform for their train.  
A large crowd of people were gathered there as well, and Kin felt their eyes. Their glaring eyes judging her every move, stance, all of it directed at her. It felt claustrophobic and tight. It always felt like this everytime she went out,   
She slowly reached out and held onto Hikari’s jacket’s arm, to which he let her hold on. From a glance one might assume that they were siblings escorting each other to school.  
Hikari led Kin inside the train and quickly grabbed a seat, advising Kin with a list of actions, “Keep watch of your bag, make sure people keep their hands to themselves, anybody try anything and I'm not there for whatever reason, kick them in the balls and scream. Anybody try anything and I don’t notice, yank my arm.”  
Despite the barrage and slight overwhelmingness of the directions and warnings, Kin felt a weird sense of reassurance. Maybe it was the fact that she really wasn’t alone in this or her relief that Hikari wasn’t talking about his disapproval, god knows everyone’s tired of it. Her especially though. He was way more intense about it with her, ever since they were . . . kids. . . .  
Kin’s train of thought trailed off and snapped back to reality where Hikari was awaiting an answer almost expectantly.  
“Eh- oh shit, sorry I- uh, wasn’t listenin,” Kin frantically apologized, her hands moving around as she did so on habit, “What happened?”  
“I asked how you passed the entrance exam.” Before Kin could come to any misunderstanding he quickly added, “what’d you use during it is what I mean..”  
“A Super Shotgun.”  
“I’m sorry you what?”  
“A Super Shotgun. I pulled it out and kinda ran around with it blastin the robots,” Kin mimicked what she did with her arms, holding an imaginary gun and blasting it around, “Recoil was a pretty big issue though. Every time I fired it kinda flew outta my hand. At one point I think I almost dislocated my shoulder too.”   
“The super shotgun from Doom?” she nodded, thinking back on how the shotgun, pulled out from a screenshot of Doom that she had saved ingame, had sent her flying back three feet the first time she shot it. But he didn’t need to know that.“Why didn’t you get a smaller gun?”  
“Didn’t deal enough damage. Or at least at a reasonable pace.” Kin squinted at Hikari, “But you on the other hand, I heard about what ya did. ‘A blue lightning bolt took down the Zero pointer along with the Thirty Pointer.’ You couldn’t back down from either of those things so you decided to take them both?”  
Hikari darted his eyes to the side, “Perhaps.”  
Kin stared at him with thinly pressed lips, not quite sure what she was expecting from him aside from that kind of reasoning but the both of them just burst into laughter.  
“You almost died from what I heard from Miki!”  
“It’ll take more than two robots to do me in.” Hikari smiled with pride as he pointed to himself, “If gangs and villains can’t get me then a robot sure as hell can’t.”  
“You almost got squished.” Their train ride passed as Kin’s earlier anxiety started fading off, absorbed into her conversation with Hikari almost as if making up for lost time, all the way until they once again stood in front of UA’s gates.   
Here they were, finally standing on the stairway to dreams, and the long and winding road ahead of them.  
Kin’s eyes were practically sparkling in wonder and daydreaming of the future, staring at the great big golden UA. Hikari on the other hand looked to his feet, remembering his father’s words and the stern warning from the principal. He takes one wrong step on this road and he’ll fall all the way down, and leave Kin all alone to walk the path. He absolutely couldn’t let that happen.  
He clenched his teeth, promising himself in silent determination that he wasn’t going to let that happen at any cost. But his brooding and ominous promise was cut by someone shouting.  
“Yooooo!” Hikari turned to see a very familiar and energetic black haired bouncing ball of energy slide to a screeching halt in front of him and Kin, “Hikari! You made it in after all!”  
Nezha’s uniform was the same as Kin’s, albeit an appropriate size but instead of the long pants, Nezha had shorts that fully displayed his mechanical legs.  
Behind Nezha was a girl taller than him by a good five inches, with blue roses growing out of her head and white daisies from the rest of her incredibly long pastel pink hair.   
She regarded Hikari with a nod, and told Nezha, “Don’t stay out here too long, class is going to start soon ok?”  
“Ok!” he shouted back energetically. She walked in unfazed by his energy lugging in a veritable train of bags.  
Nezha turned back, introducing her even though she was gone, “That’s Spring! She’s my- sister!”   
“She’s hella pretty,” Kin noted, already swooning.  
“She is!” Nezha laughed, but then gravely warned with intensity that Hikari hadn’t seen yet, “Don’t go anywhere near her or you’ll answer to me.”  
Kin shrunk back in surprise, but Nezha resumed his happy go lucky attitude without missing a single beat, “I’m Nezha Cheng! So what’s your name?!”  
“Um. Kin. Kin Shizuma Chan.”  
“Shizuma Chan?”  
“Uh yeah, My parents shared last names as they said. So I got two last names.”  
“Any particular preference?”  
“Not really?”  
Nezha put a hand on his chin and seemed to connect several lines of thought together, coming together with the brilliant idea, proclaiming, “Can I call you Chan-Chan?!”  
“Chan-chan?” Hikari repeated, raising an eyebrow.  
“Chan-Chan!” Kin shouted back happily, “Hell yeah! Blizz, please refer to me as Chan-Chan from now on.”  
“Sure thing chan-chan.”  
Kin and Nezha became fast friends, arms over shoulders chanting, “Chan Chan” like a cheerleading squad as Hikari watched, realizing in a mixture of wanting to laugh and the fearful realization that, “there’s now two of them now.”  
“Come on you two, let’s get going,” Shouldering his backpack and bags he was carrying, “Don’t wanna be late for our first day-”  
He took one step and a small robot on wheels with a train of empty carriages suddenly appeared, screeching to a halt in front of him.  
Hikari would’ve almost straight up punched it’s beady red eye if it didn’t beep out, “STUDENT ID’S DETECTED. PLEASE DEPOSIT LUGGAGE INTO THE CARTS AND PROCEED TO YOUR CLASSES.”  
The robot looked like a much smaller version of the one pointers back in the exams, though it’s torso had something of a train car connector on it’s back. It’s head was round like a dainty green ball with it’s big shiny red eye waiting for Hikari to deposit his bags.  
“Where are you taking our stuff? We don’t even know which dorm rooms are ours yet.”  
The robot beeped impatiently, “STUDENT LUGGAGE WILL BE DEPOSITED INTO THEIR DORMS FOR THEM TO UNPACK LATER. YOUR DORM ROOM NUMBER WILL BE DISTRIBUTED BY YOUR TEACHERS IN DUE TIME. DEPOSIT THE LUGGAGE AND PROCEED TO CLASSES.”  
Hikari, Kin and Nezha all looked at each other and came to the unanimous silent agreement of none of them wanting to carry the rest of their baggage for the entire day.   
Hikari threw his in, Kin gingerly lifted it in hoping they didn't search the bags in so she’d retain some dignity, and Nezha simply asked, “Hey my sister went in earlier so she had my bags, is that ok?”  
“YOUR LUGGAGE WILL BE DEPOSITED IN YOUR SISTER’S ROOM. EXECUTING DELIVERY. GOODBYE MEATBAGS.” And the robot sped away, it’s train following behind thrashing and whipping like a tail, but surprisingly none of the baggage fell off.  
“Did it just call us meatbags?” Nezha inquired, unsure of his ears.  
“It sure did,” Kin noted, keeping in mind the robot just in case of an AI uprising.  
The newly formed trio of friends, Hikari, Kin, and Nezha made their way to class 1A, turning down halls, getting lost for half of those turns, but learning more about each other along the way. Well, mostly Kin and Nezha talking as if they were already friends from childhood while Hikari listened intently with their conversation.  
“My parents were a little skeptical at first, but they let me go in agreement that I protect my sister,” Nezha explained, scratching his head earnestly, “So sorry about earlier. I kinda take it seriously.”  
“No probs,” Kin breathed a sigh of relief and followed up with, “Oh by the way! Who made your legs?”  
“My uncle, he’s something of a mechanic. I have a pretty big family. I got a little sister, three cousins, two brothers plus my mom and dad living in the same roof!”  
Hikari stopped in front of a door and saw the sign jutting out above it, “Hero Course Class 1A.”  
He slid the door open quickly, shouting behind himself, “Oi we’re here.”  
He took a proper look into the classroom and saw that the classroom was pretty packed. A colorful cast of over a dozen students keeping to themselves, introducing each other, or getting hostile with each other.  
Up in the front of the class, Ozaki’s hair fire was erupting into a veritable bonfire as he argued with another student that had brown hair, a large portion of it held above his face by two magenta hair ties, shouting back in a fury.  
“Your disrespect is pretty unmanly! Learn to take a compliment why don’t ya!?”  
“Quit patronizing me! I don’t give a crap about what you think is manly or not!”  
Gordon was giving everything in the room an evil glare, but Hikari’s spent enough time around him to interpret his glare as, “I'm tired and I wanna go home.”  
A girl with orange, black tipped hair, that had a braid above a curtain that ended right before the eyebrows tried to interject, saying, “Come on guys, let’s not start something on the first day-”  
“You’re not a part of this, so screw off!” he shouted, hands in pocket, arching his back while sticking out his neck threateningly like a chicken.  
Ozaki’s hair flared up an angry red, “Don’t talk to her like that asshole she’s just tryin to help-”  
He quickly leaned over to Miki, who was standing by trying to figure out when to cut in, “what’s his name?”  
“Leo.”  
“It’s unmanly as hell to talk to a girl like that Leo!”  
“Don’t give me that excuse you two bit masculinity driven gas head!”   
Another student closest to Hikari griped through his metal mask, “If it weren’t for all that shouting he’d be way cuter.”  
Hikari suddenly caught note of Ozaki’s hands puffing tiny wisps of smoke and Leo’s eyes silently flashed purple for a moment. It didn’t take a genius to know that somebody needed to rein them in before they both did something they would regret.  
Ozaki had barely started raising his fist and Leo’s went wide preparing to do something, but Hikari suddenly appeared between them, crackling with electricity gripping both of their collars, shoving the both of them to an arms length away.  
“BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Hikari shouted, addressing Ozaki first, “Ozaki, the hell you doin? Picking a fight on the first day?! You really want that impression on ya?!!”  
Ozaki’s face fell, muttering about how unmanly that was of him, but Leo on the other hand had his eyes wide with surprise. Raising a finger at Hikari’s face and realizing, “You’re the guy who took down the thirty pointer, and the gimmick!”  
The moment Leo pointed that out, everyone in the room suddenly perked up with interest. The spotlight was suddenly thrust to him and he just growled, “Yeah? So what if I am?”  
“You don’t look all that tough to me, you lanky sleaze. You probably didn’t even actually finish the robot off.”  
Hikari was silent for a second before warning quietly, “I don’t think you want this fight.”  
“I’m thinking that I do,” Leo’s eyes once again started flashing, much to Hikari’s surprise. Usually most people would back down, but Leo really was just picking a fight for no real reason that he could see. Oh well, so long as Hikari didn’t start it first.  
A sudden flare up of light and Hikari let go of Ozaki, but suddenly froze mid punch. His fist was an inch from Leo’s face, sparking lightning that lapped at his cheek, causing his red eyes to twitch annoyingly.  
Miki’s eyes angrily glowed purple as her hair started floating upwards as if trying to grasping the sky, extending her hand to the both of them, choking the air.  
“Hikari, you’re not helping either, maybe think about what you’re doing before ya do it! You don’t need more things stuck onto your record!!” she declared, shooting daggers at him that he was pretty sure he could actually feel.   
She glared at Leo with a cold intensity that made him shudder despite the psychic hold that he was held in, “And yo-”  
She paused, face going through a series of unheard revelations. Surprise, quickly turning to disbelief, and sympathy, all under a second.  
“I’m- I’m sorry.”  
Miki released her hold on both of them. Her hair floated back down as Hikari finally managed to take a proper breath.  
Ozaki flamboyantly bowed his head in apology to Leo, “Sorry for blowing our fight out of the water, it was wrong of me to make it worse!”  
“What were you even fighting about?”  
“I told him that I liked his hair clips and he told me to screw off.”  
Leo clicked his tongue, making sure to glare at Miki, who looked back with more sympathy. He ignored the sympathy and just made his way to his desk on the other end of the classroom, sitting down angrily and throwing his feet onto his desk.  
With that taken care of, the classroom went back to chatting about. Hikari turned around to check on his friends to see Kin behind Nezha almost as if taking cover behind him despite being a whole two inches taller than him.  
“You ok Kin?”  
“Yep, just gettin ready to move Nezha in case things went south.”  
“My hero,” he sarcastically remarked.  
“Ah, is this class 1A?” A new voice asked.   
Hikari peered up above Kin to see a person that had all their color bleached away. His skin was a paper white, and everything else about him was that same white. His stark white hair that was neatly swept to the right and the whites of his eyes blended so seamlessly with his irises that his pupils seemed to be poked in with a pencil.  
The only splashes of color he had were his gray uniform, red tie, and the headphones hanging around his neck that were plugged into a walkman clipped on his belt.  
“Yep!” Kin answered, waving nervously, “This is 1A! Welcome to the class!”  
The stark white student gave the slightest nod of acknowledgement for Kin but he stared right at Hikari. A blank stare, void of any kind of intent whatsoever. He was just a little bit unnerved, but Hikari simply inquired, “I got something on my face?”  
“I’m just figuring out how to explain something to you.”  
“Eh?” Hikari and Kin tilted their heads in unison, “Why would you want to explain something to me?”  
The student stated as if it were a matter of fact, “because if I just say it out then you would be confused. But because you’re already confused it doesn’t really seem to matter I suppose.”  
Hikari’s face of confusion prompted the student to clarify in a still unwavering tone, “My name is Krimm Hikaru. I am the examinee that you saved back in the entrance exam. I looked different then.”  
“Student I saved?” Hikari’s head sparked lightning as he ran through his memories of months prior, and suddenly remembered in clear detail, exclaiming, “Waitaminute, You’re dust quirk!?”  
“No I’m Krimm Hikaru.”  
“You look way different from then!” Nezha exclaimed, pointing out, “ya had brown hair, freckles, blue eyes, a smaller jawline and bigger ears!”  
He noticed the questioning stares from Hikari and Kin, “What? I’m good with faces..”  
“Well that's a side effect of my quirk. Speaking of which, can I have a lock of your hair?”  
“I’m sorry what?” Hikari gently grabbed Nezha’s shoulder and started pulling him away from Krimm, as he started processing their confusion. Krimm looked as if he had just asked for the time, taking a second to remember that asking people for hair wasn’t something you just do.  
He elaborated much to the trio’s relief, “Well you see my quirk is-”  
His eyes were tugged away for barely a second, and for that single second his attention was diverted entirely.  
Hikari turned to see what had suddenly caught his attention so intensely to see a girl sitting in the back, almost as if she were blending in with the shadow of the classroom’s corner. She was staring into nothing with her hands folded like a tent over her mouth, and had an unkempt pitch black hair adorned her head, though seeming less like hair and more like a simple messy vantablack void. It was almost as if somebody had photoshopped what hair that she did have and removed it entirely.  
She didn’t notice the staring, if she did then she didn’t care. But creepily enough, she twitched in their direction when Kin asked Krimm in a low voice, “Ay, do you know her?”  
Krimm turned back to Kin, his bland expression twinged with sprinkles of some internal confusion. “No. I don’t think I do.”  
Hikari suddenly noticed that void hair’s pair of void eyes were glaring at him. It was only for a second, but her two white pupils stabbed him with a sense of superiority and condescending authority. He had a gut feeling that she didn’t like him already. The feeling was mutual.  
Something told him that she was going to be trouble for him, but his thoughts on her were interrupted when somebody’s gruff voice noted loudly, “Well. Looks like everybody here’s having quite a good time considering how loud you all are.”  
Everyone turned to look at the doorway, suddenly occupied by a long black haired man with stubbles of a beard and moustache, and looking like he hadn’t gotten any semblance of sleep for years. In addition to his apparent sleep deprivation, he just wore all black and had silver scarfs resting from his shoulders and neck, and a yellow sleeping bag tucked under his arm. Hikari personally mistook the guy as a hobo that got lost onto UA’s campus.  
“It took you all more than ten seconds to quiet down, and even less time for you to pick a fight,” he noted, aiming at Hikari, Ozaki and Leo, but returning to the rest of the class, “Glad to see where everybody’s priorities are going into a course for training heroes.”  
He strode in, casting a disapproving glare to Leo, then Ozaki, and settled on Hikari. He seemed to recognize him, then notice the lack of uniform, “Hikari Hirakata eh? I’ve got my eye on you kid, so don’t go around trying to stir up trouble. I have a feeling I’ll be having a lot of that even without your issues.”  
Before Hikari could open his mouth to probably make a horrible first impression, Kin shouted in ecstatic revelation, “HOLY SHIT YOU’RE ERASERHEAD!”  
She rummaged through her bag, muttering, “Idon’tknowwhybutIwasn’texpectingyoutoactuallybeheresoIthoguhtthatmaybetheyswitchedthingsupandyou’dbeteachingclassBorsomethinglikethatIdunnoi’mramblingatthispointIramblewhenimnervoussorry-” and pulled out a pair of yellow goggles, finally taking a proper breath “-Can you sign my goggles!?”  
“No.”  
“Probably should’ve expected that.”   
He sighed, tiredly asking them, “Hurry up and take your seats. I need to take attendance before we get started with the lesson.”  
Eraserhead plopped down his sleeping bag behind the desk in front, and gripped the podium, overlooking the whole class.  
“I am your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shota. You will refer to me as Aizawa-Sensei, understand?” he asked, his sleep deprived eyes casting his intimidating presence through the class. “Don’t make me repeat your names when I call attendance so we can get this part over with. Respond with here or whatever you want.”  
Hikari kicked up his legs onto the table and stared out the window in listless thought as he came to the conclusion that he didn’t like Aizawa all too much, whether it be the condescending tone or whatever, it simply turned him off and into a different direction. Kin on the other hand seemed to still be ecstatic that Aizawa was their teacher, pretty much poking Hikari with her hand asking, “yooooooo, I feel like I’m dreaming! Punch me.”  
He flicked her forehead as Aizawa started reading down the list, going row by row, starting with, “Hikari, you’re here. Shuzo Fujimoto?”  
“Here.” Shuzo had black hair and green eyes, but his most eye-catching feature was a metal mask covering the bottom portion of his face from the nose down, looking like some kind of gas mask, two black meshes on the sides of the mask.   
“Kirose Kyuoko?”  
“Hm,” She loudly hummed. Kirose was wearing the summer variant of the school uniform, her jacket sitting on her backrest as she seemed to already be sweating from the mild sunlight. Her dark blue hair was long, going down the back of her chair while being constrained by a single tie, turning it all into a single long tail running down her head, and her black winged eyeliner was certainly eye catching, that is if the cold stare didn’t make you avert your eyes first.  
“Kioshi Akuno?”  
“Here.” The void haired girl scratched at her desk, patiently awaiting for the inconvenience to be over with.  
“Kin Shizuma Chan?”  
“Here!” she excitedly announced. It seemed like the fact that her fan-nerding was overpowering her anxiety about being at a school for the first time surprisingly. For the moment anyways.  
“Rei Sueta Novaskoshi?”  
“Just Sueta,” She demanded, “Only my friends call me Rei.” Her blue solar fire hair calmly burned almost silently, two silver and yellow earrings dangled as she rested her cheek on her fist, with a purse dangling from her chair.  
Aizawa could see trouble in the future with her. He was never one for gossip but he heard somewhere that, Sueta Novaskoshi, future heiress to Novaskoshi Trading Corp, had something of a very explosive temper. No matter, he still had over ten of these students to go over, he’d deal with her temper when it comes up.  
“Kumicho Tsugihara?”  
“Present!” Kumicho raised a very long three jointed arm up so Aizawa could see. She had about six of these three jointed arms, each of which were keeping close to her body trying not to take any space around her, but somewhat failing as they relaxed and spread out, however, she did still have human legs. She had three pointed claws on each end of her hands that tapped nervously against each other, and a long ponytail that defied gravity, reaching out to the roof shaped like an unused calligraphy brush. She had gigantic goofy glasses that were basically whited out, hiding most of her face behind them.  
“Krimm Hikaru?”  
“Present.” Krimm stared straight ahead in all his monotone and monochromatic presence, spacing out hugely, headphones on and leaving Hikari to wonder what he was listening to.  
“Inkou Seikatsu?  
“Yoyoyo! Here and ready for fun!” She exclaimed just as energetically as Kin had earlier, even throwing up a peace sign. Her blonde hair was a short cut mess, strands of yellow spilling onto her face with a cowlick poking through the chaos of it all.  
“Ozaki koji?”  
“Here!” He shouted with gusto, fire hair flaring in tune with that bravado.  
“Nezha Cheng?”  
“Hi!” he greeted, waving to Aizawa, who didn’t really bother to look up at him.  
“Gordon Koji?”  
“Here.” he growled, an imposing tower of over eight feet of pure muscle, horns, and a tail that adjusted to a more comfortable position.  
“Miki Koji?”  
“Here,” Miki was fitting a metal headband, apparently already getting a headache or something like it. She squeezed it on and kept a mental note to get a bigger one when she could.  
“Autumn Wind?”  
“H- Here Aizawa-Sensei,” Autumn stuttered nervously. Hikari recognized that she was the orange hair that tried to stop the earlier fight. Her japanese had a bit of an accent, and that name didn’t sound japanese either. If he had to guess, she was foreign exchange, though that wasn’t his business to know.  
“Akoto- Kurusu?”  
“Hm.” Hikari wasn’t too sure why Aizawa stumbled over Akoto’s last name, but even he had to admit, the name sounded familiar. He wasn’t sure where he remembered it from, so he decided not to focus too much on it. Akoto’s hair was split down the middle, his right side black and left side a deep scarlet, with not so much a single hair out of place. He had some kind of gnarly scar on his left eye running down from his forehead to his cheek, seemingly barely healed with hints of pink and red.  
“Miruku Suzuke?”  
“Here.” she had long white bangs that went down to her neck while the rest of her hair was put into a ponytail. Poking out from her hair were two rounded off brown horns and what looked to be cow ears. Not to mention her body was incredibly well endowed, and Hikari was pretty sure that she could crush a watermelon between her biceps without an issue.  
“Miyu Hinoki?”  
“Here!” Miyu looked like she had a wooden face brace growing on her forehead and covering her sideburns, all the way around her head, leaving her pointy elf ears exposed. Her hair was green as grass and had similar wooden growths around her fingers.  
“Rell Saeke?”  
“Here Aizawa.” How Hikari didn’t notice the brightly colored dull yellow, red, and orange feathered raptor in a school uniform was beyond him. He hung his tongue out the side of his mouth like a dog while his eyes darted around at whatever caught his interest at that moment. He clicked his talon toe on the ground excitedly as he combed his arm’s feathers with his claws.  
“Sato Seiken?”  
“hey.” Sato had something of a mohawk. It was short, white, arched down his forehead, and the sides of his head were shaved short to a stubble all the way around his head so the top of his scalp was the only bit that had actual long hair. He had one long scar down his right eye, a yellow eye paler than his other as he twirled a quarter between his fingers.  
“Leo-”  
“Yeah yeah I’m here.” Leo leaned back in his chair as he adjusted his feet up on the desk, looking like he didn’t want to be here. He caught Hikari looking at him, casually flipping up his finger, prompting him to return the gesture.  
“Right then.” Aizawa snapped the attendance sheet shut, looking at the classroom once again, casting a menacing sense of authority that riled Hikari slightly more.  
“Everybody hurry up and get changed into your gym clothes.”  
Everybody seemed to link minds, all suddenly wondering, “Eh?”  
Autumn raised her hand, asking, “Um, aren’t we supposed to have some kind of entrance ceremony?”  
“UA allows for a freedom for teachers to be able to lead their classes forward how they want. And besides, whatever’s there can be introduced to you at a later date. Therefore, hurry up and let's get going.”  
Hikari was pretty sure that was dodging the question but soon enough, everybody was standing outside a clear field behind one of the buildings.  
Kin’s anxiety had returned with a vengeance for her abandoning it like a crazed ex, so she unconsciously scissored her gray and black lined fingers while tugging at the long sleeves of her undershirt, trying to hide as much of her arms as possible while Hikari was stretching his legs, leaning on his right leg and sticking out his left.  
Aizawa filled out a clipboard and calibrated a device while explaining, “We’re going to be finding out the limits of your quirks through a number of exercises.”  
Kin was filled with horrible dread as Aizawa continued, “Softball throwing, standing long jump, grip strength, side jumpin, all exercises you’ve done in middle school   
Aizawa’s eyes trained on Kin, who wanted to shrink into her clothes under the weight of his stare.  
Aizawa had read up on all his student’s and their academic pasts. Kin Shizuma, had no such past. Her parents told the administration that they didn’t keep many records of their academic teachings for her. Despite the large void of records, what records that she did have were from elementary school, but she didn’t completely graduate from there as by the end of that year, she had switched over to homeschooling.  
They had almost no idea about her current academic level, but clearly she was smart enough to be able to completely ace the written portion. But also barely physically capable enough to pass the robot destruction part.  
“Shizuma.”  
Kin jumped at Aizawa calling her out but stepped out nervously.  
“You don’t have any physical exam records. So let’s start off with you.” Aizawa motioned to the white circle and the vast open field behind him, “Stand in the circle and use your quirk to launch the softball as far as you can..”  
Kin paused, the gears in her head turning madly. “Use my quirk to get anything I need?”  
“Yeah.” Aizawa clicked his clipboard with his pen, “We don’t have lots of time.”  
Kin looked at the ball, then jogged up to the circle and started drawing in the dirt. She started with a pentagon base, extending a tube up and out, and dipping her hand into the dirt.  
Whatever Kin saw as an image, whether it be on a screen, canvas, wall, or a doodle in the dirt, so long as she recognizes the image in its entirety, she’s able to reach in and grab it.  
So she pulled out and assembled a black baseball tee, then placed the softball top before kicking the dirt and drawing once again. This time pulling out a strangely familiar red grip, black and yellow baseball bat then another baseball.  
“What's she gonna do with the second ball?” He heard Sueta scoff like she just heard a joke, as Kin placed down the second ball behind herself and readied herself.  
She muttered to herself, “timing is everything, hit this right and you’re good to go.”  
The bat suddenly hummed with power as she winded it up and swung with as much force as her untrained body could muster. The bat, glowing with power, slammed into the softball and blasted it away like a meteorite into the sky.  
The moment that the ball had left the circle, the dirt around Kin kicked up from the force of the explosion, the dust blinding everybody as Kin watched the ball intently.  
“The angle was off!” She realized, seeing that the ball was dropping back down to earth closer than she predicted. The ball went higher than it did further, but the fact that she hit it was already an achievement for her.  
Unwilling to let the ball fall so short, Kin grabbed the second ball and winded up her arm, and pitched it straight forwards and vanished into thin air just barely five feet away.  
A precious few seconds passed in between the ball’s vanishing, the softball was about to come crashing back down, when the baseball reappeared, erupting back into existence in a flash of blue fire, rocketing into the softball smashing the softball once again like a bullet, streaking further away parallel to the ground and smashing into the ground finally with a loud explosion.  
Kin looked back to Aizawa, awaiting results, to which he flipped his device so the entire class could see that Kin had launched the ball over five hundred and seventy six meters away.  
“YO!” Kin shouted in victory, turning to Hikari, still shouting, “Ya see that home run bat and beastball combo!? That felt AWESOME!”  
“We can seriously use our Quirks like this?”  
“Finally! I’m gonna be able to breeze through this sorta stuff easy!”  
“This is where the fun begins,” Hikari grinned, sparking lightning in anticipation.  
“The fun? What do you think you’re grinning so happily about?” Aizawa glared right at Hikari, “You think that just because you can properly use your quirk whenever you want, you’ll have more fun with everything? This is UA. Here we’re going to put you through the wringer in order to train heroes to save people, not delinquents to pick fights.”  
Aizawa threw out casually, almost as if somebody had just asked him the weather, “Oh. And I should mention. The person with the lowest physical overall score is going to be expelled.”  
The entire class took a second to process before erupting into disbelief. Kin especially, suddenly turning paler than a ghost.  
Kin and Nezha shouted at Aizawa, “Isn’t that a bit unfair on our first day!?”  
“Unfair?” Aizawa turned to address both of them, “The world’s filled with unfair things. In the past three years alone, there’s been a major increase in crime, villain attacks are getting bolder and bigger, and people nowadays are more scared than ever. Heroes are meant to balance out the unfair. We need more heroes, but we need them to be good heroes. If you can’t meet the new standards, then you may as well drop now.”  
He pulled back his long black hair from his face as he welcomed, “This is UA’s Hero Course. If you can’t handle the pressure then you get out before you crack.”  
“Aizawa Senpai!” Aizawa’s posture stiffened as he turned up, annoyed with the interruption of the sound of fluttering from up above. Everyone else looked up to see a moth’s gigantic wings, lined with white fuzz on the upper rim of the wing, glowing blue, and gold through it’s beautiful orange and yellow patterns on a black canvas, with great big blue eyes looking down on everyone  
She landed gently, as though not to stir up dust as her wings folded back and the glow died down so they could see her face properly. She had large round glasses with all blue eyes peering through from behind, white fluffy short hair that had two long strands of hair dropping down the sides that were tied with a tube of yellow string and two fluffy antennae sticking up to the sky. Her face had two pairs of birthmarks, resembling that of narrow arrows, one pointing up above her eye and another shorter one pointing downwards below them. Her hero costume looked to be more of something like armor, thigh segments of white matte metal with orange rims, an orange kneecap and white calves, with pointed yellow boots.  
She had four arms, all of which had matching white gauntlets, and a flexible piece on her waist and back, with a black tight suit underneath all of the armor. To her sides hung four pairs of what looked to be foot long handles that had a curved piece of metal acting as a hand guard clinking against her thighs.  
“Aizawa-senpai,” she passively fumed at him, hands waving around as she said, “We were supposed to have an entrance ceremony! I heard you were pragmatic but I was under the impression that you at least would bring the class to introduce a new staff member.”  
“I forgot about it.”  
“No you didn’t, you just didn’t want to show up.”  
“Correct.” Aizawa turned to the class again, “in the time that we’d waste in that ceremony, we’d already be getting the Physical Exams done. So if you want to introduce yourself, do it now.”  
She sighed, but turned to the class, bowing respectfully, “Good morning Class 1A, my name is Morusai Imago. As of today, I am Class 1A’s personal guidance counselor.”  
“Personal Guidance Counselor?” Shuzo echoed back through his filter, “Don’t remember UA having those before.”  
“That’s because it's a new program being introduced,” Aizawa explained, “In light of recent years, we’re upping our security. Every class has a Personal Guidance Counselor as something of a secondary guardian to protect the class if needed, or act as a guidance counselor as the name would suggest.”  
“Does this mean Hound Dog is out of a job?”  
“No. If anything this is helping his job,” Morusai pointed out, “Many students often have a great number of troubles and Hound-senpai is only one person. If you feel more comfortable speaking to him then you may as well.”  
“Great, now that the introductions are out of the way. We can get started on finding out who gets expelled.”  
“Ah is that wha- . . . I'm sorry?”  
“The person with the lowest scores is being expelled apparently,” Leo shouted helpfully.  
“Thank you Leo. Aizawa-senpai, you can’t possibly have the power to expel students on their first day! Does All Might-san know? Does Principale Nezu?!”  
“I do and can, I have special permission from Principal Nezu so any problems you can take up with him.”  
Morusai furrowed her brows but a deep seated anger growing from behind her glasses, but she seemed to pull it back and sigh deeply. “Then perhaps I will Aizawa. But before that, I'm helping oversee the tests.”  
“Sure, you do whatever you want.”  
So the PE tests began. Starting with a fifty meter dash.  
Nezha kicked himself upwards off the starting pads and landed on his metal legs, quickly gaining speed as he slid to the end much faster than his opponent, Autumn. Nezha clocked in at 3.2 seconds, Autumn got a respectable 7.23 seconds.  
Nezha muttered to himself as he inspected his scrapes, “Screwed up the landing,” Whereas Autumn was optimistic about being faster than her middle school time.  
Kin wasn’t much better, she went up against Kirose, who went barefoot to her puzzlement.   
“Shoes don’t breathe enough,” Kirose complained to nobody in particular as she took her stance next to Kin.  
The robot shouted, “GO!” and Kirose launched forwards, ice erupting from her feet, stacking atop itself and propelling herself into the end while Kin was left in the dust.  
[Kirose Kyuoko - Cold Sweat - Kirose’s body sweats out a coolant of sorts that is able to freeze in contact with the air and keeps her body at a near sub zero temperature! She sweats easily due to the temperature difference]  
Kirose’s time was 5.23 seconds, Kin took 8.92 seconds and promptly collapsed in exhaustion.  
Morusai knelt down, lifting Kin gently, “Are you alright Shizuma-chan?”  
Kin gave a meek and shaky thumbs up as Hikari watched, a voice coming back slowly, but ignored as it came around his turn.  
As naturally as a fish through water, Hikari blitzed the distance. His comfortable Forty Percent was more than enough and barely heard the robot recording the time beep, “1.01 seconds.”  
But a second beep nearly the same instant, rang out, “1.01 seconds.”  
Hikari turned to see the one he just raced, the void haired girl, Kioshi if he wasn’t mistaken, stood barely half a foot away in his shadow. She didn’t say anything, just stared and walked off as they moved onto the next activity.  
Grip Strength. Sadly for Hikari, and Nezha, they didn’t have too much in the way of that. Hikari with a 50kg, Nezha with a very surprising 60kg, and Kin with the highest score of two tons, with the assistance of a Mech Gauntlet. Apparently that wasn’t allowed by Aizawa.  
“Feels like I’m using cheat codes,” Kin admitted while taking off the glove, but whatever guilt she felt about using outside items to crunch the gauge with was washed away with Gordon and Miruku competitively crushing their own gauges with monstrous strength.  
They both got a score of 902 kg. Their strength contest ended in a draw as the two of them exchanged a silent and muscular handshake in recognizing each other’s swole strength.   
“I’m looking forward to working with you,” Miruku told him while gripping his hand firmly.  
For the first time, Gordon was clearly surprised, well at least from what Hikari could tell. To anyone else, it might have just looked like Gordon raised a scaly eyebrow up an inch as if he found it amusing, but he returned the greeting, “I am as well.”  
Hikari heard some sounds from Kin, and saw that upon seeing this moment of friendship, she had solid stream of blood flowing out of her nose as she simply threw a thumbs up with a dumb grin. He guessed she was thinking of some graphic imagery.  
Right next to Kin was a messy haired blonde with a similar nosebleed, fist bumping her dragon tattooed hand with Kin while noting, “I see we’re of like minds.”  
“Hell yeah, A fellow woman of culture I see.”  
A new friendship was forged between Kin and Ink just like that, much to Hikari’s silent relief.  
Then came the next event, the standing long jump. Hikari more or less did well he supposed. He had been bouncing around with his percentages, this time going for a lazy Thirty Percent and landing far beyond the halfway point in the sand.  
Then side stepping. This time, Twenty Percent, turning into a constant blur of blue, lightning and boredom over the events. But while he was side stepping in he was plagued in doubts.  
Kin was scoring the lowest in the exercises across the board save for the ball throwing. Even with the items to help her out, robot gloves, repulsor shoes, or boost pads could only help her out so much, and even so, it was still low.  
A gnawing voice grew stronger the more that the tests went on, demanding that he say them aloud and just let them out. He shut himself up and told him that it was for her sake. Kin needed undivided support, not a constant nagging annoyance.  
The last activity, looped back around to the softball throwing, where Kin finally sat out. She was heaving heavily, this being the most exercise she had ever been put through for about ten years. She wasn’t going to last.  
Hikari saw Morusai looking over the results over Aizawa’s shoulder, grimacing, and it was obvious who’s score was looking the most grim.  
“Kin-” he didn’t get to finish whatever was going to spill out of his mouth as Aizawa called him up for his turn.  
“He’s gonna really launch that thing,” he heard from someone in the class, “I mean, if he was able to punch a robot that probably weighed a few tons into the air and also take out a zero pointer, he’d be able to launch a ball to space.”  
Hikari bounced the ball, bouncing it off his foot casually as he thought, how far should I launch it? He ran some numbers through his head and concluded that ten percent should be enough. Don’t wanna show up the rest of the class or anything, after all. And besides, ten is still a lot of speed. Nobody would notice if he dropped speed.  
He bounced the ball up one last time, the world dropping to a crawl as he winded up a kick, angling it up-  
But the world of dilated time never arrived, throwing him off balance and whiffing the air, missing the ball entirely.  
Hikari looked at his legs, scrambling to find out what the hell just happened? “I was trying to use my quirk! What happened-”  
“I erased it.” Aizawa glowered at him, hair floating up to the air as he walked over, looking down at his recordings and menacingly stated, “You’ve been slowing down.”  
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about-”  
“I know exactly how your quirk works Hirakata,” Red eyes training disapprovingly on Hikari, “You can’t go full speed without risking your health, but your results would suggest that you’re just slowing down on purpose.”  
Oh. He did figure it out. “Tch. So what? I’m watching out for my health, I was injured a few months back you know-”  
“Which is why you were going to kick the ball with your injured leg? It's something of a privilege to be here, Hirakata. Especially in your case, so I would suggest you start taking this seriously, even if it’s meanial to you, otherwise you’re not gonna make it as a proper hero, and if I see any further signs of such. You won’t be here any longer.”  
Aizawa took a step back, walking back over to Morusai, “Try again. And I better not catch you slacking again.”  
“Not taking this seriously?” Hikari muttered to himself, “Looking down on me like that when I outclass everyone here with my quirk alone. FINE, you want me to take this seriously? Fifty Percent we go.”  
The next second happened in a blur. Nobody could too clearly see what happened but a loud crack from Hikari’s kick and the ball suddenly vanished into the sky only to get absolutely annihilated by a just as sudden twin streak of beams.  
The entire event happened so suddenly, nobody reacted for a second until the shockwave from the kick and explosion washed over everybody in the class, flinging dust and softball bits into people’s faces.  
Hikari in bewilderment traced the laser blast back to someone else on the field, the new arrival looking particularly annoyed, as if he just found somebody had pissed in his coffee.  
Aizawa and the rest of the class found the source as well as he proclaimed, “AIZAWA you bastard. I was late to come here, expecting to enter the gym to find a bunch of wide eyed kids only to find half of them there. What makes you think you can just skip out on such an important ceremony?!”  
The man had black hair, styled similarly to that of Morusai’s but with two red braids down the side of his face instead of the yellow. A crown of three yellow horns poked through the hair and angrily glowed in resonance with his crimson eyes.  
He too had four arms, though was wearing a black, white, and bloody orange jacket over what was presumably a hero costume that looked similar to Morusai’s, just with a great many more jagged points and reversed color scheme, black and gray replacing where there would be white and red where there would have been yellow.  
But his wings, unlike Morusai’s, whose wings were graceful and colorfully beautiful, his wings were burned and darkly colored. The upper ridges of the wing weren’t floofy white bits like Morusai, instead looked to bone, a spike or two sticking out of the top. The edges of the wings were all jagged and flimsy, as if somebody had taken a piece of folded paper, cut it’s edges haphazardly then burned some of those edges. The pattern of the upper pair of the wings were two yellow lightning streaks that held red pulsing veins inside, all set against a black setting. The lower pair of wings had the same black setting, but a yellow rimmed, scarlet filled eye with magenta irises and thin pupils in the dead center that seemed to want to kill everything that it looked at.  
But on top of those ugly broken wings, were two metal clips that forced the upper half of the wings to stay folded against the lower half. Unable to properly spread them out like Morusai, and an ankle monitor glued to his leg.  
“I’m assuming you’re taking these kid’s measurements or whatnot?”  
“How observant of you Bratta. You’re paying for that softball.”  
“From the way that speed racer over there kicked it, I’d say he pays for it first.”  
“Bratta, aren’t you supposed to be with Class B at the moment?” If this guy was Class B’s personal counselor then Hikari felt sorry for them.  
“And Toshinori supposed to be here but he’s caught up in a meeting or something at the moment, but don’t worry Aizawa,” But he gestured behind himself to an approaching class also dressed in their Gym uniforms, “I am with class B! But I asked if I could bring them along for a real quick introductory lesson between both classes. So I don’t need to introduce myself twice. I’m sure that I’m allowed to do that at least.”  
“Then hurry up and get on with it.”  
Vlad and along with another teacher, presumably the personal counselor of that class, donning a white robe and gold accessories and a fox mask, and the rest of Class B settled onto the field in gym uniforms alongside Class A, and quietly mingled and greeted each other. Morusai seemed the most happy to see the other teachers and enthusiastically shaking both Vlad and the fox mask’s hands with her right hands.  
Bratta loudly cleared his throat for attention as he loudly announced, “My name is Bratta Imago, as of today, a Hero Course specific teacher to all you brats! Brother to that second rate hero over there-” pointing to Morusai, “And father to a dissapointment-” And pointed to Leo, who sighed in resignation, “-As well as a convicted criminal.”  
“That prick’s your dad?” Ozaki asked, as if he and Leo didn’t fight nearly thirty minutes ago, but Leo sighed again and nodded, almost ashamed.  
The shock of the causal statement of his criminal status rippled through the classes, as he continued, “Details of my conviction, I will not disclose as I am legally obligated not to, and personally do not care to. I got off on probation thanks to my sister pulling unwanted favors and now work hours under constant surveillance here at UA. But before I was incarcerated, I was a hero. I went undercover to a number of different organizations, rooted them out of hiding and dragged them to justice, so I know a thing or two because I’ve seen many things or two.”  
Kin cautiously raised her hand asking, “Was your hero name Executor?”  
“Congratulations,” Bratta pointed to her almost drunkenly, “You have no life and have obscure knowledge of very obscure people.”  
Kin winced at the truth as Bratta continued, “As the basement dweller here said. My hero name was Executor, but you will all refer to me as Bratta. Nothing more, nothing less. Here’s my first lesson for all you brats. At this moment, all of you are trash. Unfit to be heroes, and I have three years to beat the trash out of you and see if there’s anything to salvage out of you all. So in order to start, I need to get a good understanding of where everybody is here. Therefore, I'm going to have something of a quick exhibition lesson.”  
“Wasn’t what we were doing with Aizawa doing just that?”  
“No. Numbers only tell you so much. I need you to witness the level of skill that you need to achieve.” He rolled his neck around, cracking it while admitting, “And I kinda need to blow off some steam so really, this is teaching you something and helping little old me. Positives to go around for everyone. Go easy on me since I don’t have my proper equipment, nor do I have my . . full capabilities.”  
His wings shuffled and shuddered against the clips but they remained unmoving. He shrugged and focused back up on the class.  
“Students, Kioshi Akuno and Spring Cheng! Come out here!”  
Kioshi took a step forward and pulled a hood over her head, then stuffed her hands into her pockets. Hikari noticed her gym clothes were also different from everyone else’s. She had longer sleeves, a hood sewn into the back that hid her face from the sun. How odd.  
Spring stepped forwards as well. Nezha cheered on his sister, “Whooo Spring!” as she stood with a regal poise and asked, “what’s the lesson here if I may ask? Will we be fighting each other?”  
Bratta scoffed, “As fun as it might sound to watch two kids duke it out, no not yet. Just keep listening and you’ll see.”  
He turned his attention back to the rest of the classes, “These two are what I consider the best in your classes. I reviewed their test footage, answers in the written exam, and so and so. SO, instead of making them fight each other, they are both fighting me.”  
Hold on- Best in the classes? “Why am I not up there?” Hikari arrogantly asked loudly. Both classes, the teachers, everyone turned their spotlights right at Hikari, as Bratta squinted his already angry eyes further, staring down Hikari like he was looking at a piece of trash. The sight of which made Hikari stare right back with equal intensity.  
“Why are you not up here?” Bratta seemed to have a vein pop out of his head, “Why are you NOT up here?!” he repeated again, louder just in case anybody in the back heard.   
Hikari raised a cocky eyebrow but caught Leo with wide eyes, almost seemingly concerned for him.  
“Please Hirakata. I may have gotten something wrong in my grading, so please do tell me why you think you belong up here?” Bratta raised two of his hands, almost as if he was making a show out of this.   
Everything that he was doing was starting to annoy Hikari more and more but he answered, “Cause I can blitz everyone here before Aizawa over there could actually blink.”  
“And there it is!” Bratta announced, “That attitude! I don’t mind a little backtalk, but what I cannot stand is that ARROGANCE! You remind me of . . . Oh. You’re Velocity Zero’s kid aren’t you?”  
The name Velocity Zero rippled through the classes. After all, his dad is a top 50 hero. Murmurs of the sudden news sprung out, some confused on who Velocity Zero was and the ones who knew explaining for them. But all the talk of his dad seemed to only get thrown onto the growing pile of annoyances that were turning into anger.  
“Yeah? What if I am!?”   
“I talked to him back in the day. He was annoying. Always going on about rules, how we needed to adhere to them or we’re no better than the villains and the preaching about saving people! But one thing he always said was that he had one of the strongest quirks, all because it made him stupid amounts of fast.” Bratta’s face cringed in remembrance, reliving those conversations and telling himself to get back to the matter at hand. “Point is, you and your old man are the same. You both rely too much on your quirks. Now, let’s say we take those quirks away? What are you then?”  
“Still able to kick your ass?” Being compared to that shitty old man was the last straw, he sparked lightning, taking a full step forwards just about ready to shove his fist into Bratta’s face, but suddenly noticed the lightning vanishing.  
He turned to see Aizawa, eyeballing him, sending him warnings, almost imploring him to step back and really think about what he was doing. So Hikari did, hesitantly opening a fist he had clenched.   
“Enough!” Morusai shouted to Bratta, “Get on with the lesson or we’re skipping over it.”  
Bratta rolled his eyes and seemed to look to the class with a, Can you believe her? Expression, but obliged.   
“Now! Where was I before I was interrupted by Sonic the Hedgehuman?” Bratta pinched his nose with two hands, “AH yes! The two of you are fighting me one on one.”  
Bratta shimmied his jacket off, dropping it down his wings and flicking it onto the ground further back and cracking his four knuckles, “Who wants to go first?”  
His question was met with silence as Spring pondered whether Bratta was serious about this, looking to Vlad, who gestured to go along with it.  
She glanced at Kioshi, who bowed as if to say, “go ahead.”  
So Spring stepped forwards with Nezha loudly cheering her on. She cautiously asked, “Am I correct in assuming that we aren’t to hold back in any way?”  
“Of course. Force me to submit in any way you can try. You’ll certainly need it.” He turned to Morusai shouting, “OI! If you wanna keep the rest of the classes safe, you get a good vantage point to actually do that.”  
Morusai’s eyes widened, almost as if she wasn’t sure if she heard that right. Bratta actually caring for the class?   
Morusai walked over to the center of the crowd and had her wings folded, so everybody could still see, but kept them ready to be raised at any moment.  
Spring reached up to her hair, picking out a blue rose from her scalp and a white daisy from her flowing pastel pink locks, both of which transformed in her hands. The blue rose extended out from it’s bud to form a blue pristine, shining double edged sword with the rest of the blooming pedals as it’s guard. The daisy opened up, expanding into a wide circular shield that bent forwards toward the tip with a yellow dot in it’s center. It’s pedals seemingly turned into glass, reflecting light as she took a stance.  
[Spring Cheng - Flower Armory - The flowers that grow from her scalp and hair are able to be transformed into different forms of weaponry. Blue Roses for Swords, and Daisies for Shields! They grow back fairly regularly over the course of a week.]  
She raised her shield in front of her body and raised her sword above her shoulders, angling the sword down, waiting for Bratta to take up his own fighting stance.  
“Oh? Class B gets the spotlight first? Let’s hope you don’t disappoint your teacher and classmates.” Bratta raised all his four arms and looked back in disappointment when he tried to raise his wings only to hear them clink against the lock on them..  
He sighed and settled for his four armed stance, two of his right arms forward, one off to the side with open palms and the other clenched in a fist while his left mirrored the same, poised to face Spring.  
A moment of calm fell upon the field. the wind was brought to a stop in accordance with both of them waiting for the other to make a move.  
A flash of purple light from Bratta’s eyes and he charged at Spring, swinging to her right, aiming for her face.  
But she easily turned it aside, rolling around him and aiming to strike the pommel of her flower sword against the back of his head, but Bratta had spun around, eyes blasting a spasm of purple beams out like a shotgun.  
Spring managed to bring her shield around to block, the majority of the spray, dashing back and inspecting a small burn on her pinky.  
Bratta sprung back onto his feet and his eyes flashed brighter and shotgunned another beam at her.   
She raised her shield in time and upon it hitting the shield, the beam fractured everywhere. Most of it reached skywards or slamming into the ground but beams were reflected at the watching classes.  
Morusai reacted quickly, beating her wings up and down once, scattering a twinkling cloud of what looked like golden glitter across the classes. The beams met the clouds of glitter and splintered further, breaking apart the prism beams of energy into smaller and smaller strands until they fizzed out weakly in the glittering clouds.  
Over the blinding light from Bratta’s prism beams, Nezha shouted incredulously at the realization that everyone else was coming, “Hero Course is way intense!”  
Spring’s reflective flower shield was starting to wilt and burn at the edges of her pedals. Playing defensive wasn’t going to last long, so she readied her sword again, dug her feet in and charged against the onslaught.  
Bratta raised his power and the prism beam focused itself from a shotgun spray to a real laser beam, which only served to fracture more intensely against the daisy shield.  
The pedals smoked and blackened as Spring closed the distance and drove the laser back into Bratta’s face, smashing the shield into his face, sending stumbling back as Spring followed up quickly with a stab aiming at his shoulder, hoping that she wouldn’t have to hurt him too badly to pass the test.  
Bratta recovered quickly, grabbing the sword with the palm of his hand, the point of the sword digging into his palm, but succeeded in stopping it before it drew blood. His other hand reached up from below, grabbing the sword’s blade as he kicked Spring in the stomach and wrenching the sword from her hand.  
She stumbled back, rolling back onto her feet as Bratta toyed around with the sword, making a few practice swings while noting, “Nice weight distribution on it, and clearly more durable than it seems for a flower sword. Lighter than what I'm used to though, hm.”  
Spring didn’t respond, only grabbing another rose from her head and raising a blackened and wilting daisy shield, charging again, determined to knock Bratta down and take the win for her class!  
Bratta tossed the sword to his right hand and met her charge with a downward swing that Spring slammed aside with her shield.  
The sword flew out of his hand and clattered on the ground as Spring swung her sword at Bratta’s neck, stopping right before it made contact.  
“What’s wrong?” Bratta asked after the two of them stood in silence for a moment, grabbing the sword, “I haven’t said I surrender yet!”   
Bratta grabbed her arm, twisting it around and wrenching the sword out of her grasp, and kicked her gut, sending her rolling against the ground and to a stop.  
“You think villains are just going to back down just because you hold a sword to their throat?! When fighting villains they’re going to be desperate, insane, downright scum in order to either get away or kill another hero. So if you can’t account for that percentage of villains that are fanatics, then you’re going to get injured or killed.”  
Spring rolled aside and ran to grab the sword on the ground as Bratta tossed aside the sword he disarmed, shouting, “Lesson’s not over until either you tap or you force me to.”  
“Spring!” Nezha shouted. She turned to the sound of his voice as he shouted, “Be careful!”  
Spring gauged her injuries. Her left hand’s pinky and index finger were scuffed slightly from being caught in the prism blasts. She was short of breath but was already mostly recovered, taking in calm deep breaths. Her shield was all but done for and she was becoming exhausted, no matter how many deep breaths she was doing.  
She looked back to Bratta, who waited for her response, clearly not caring if she forfeited or kept going, and stood up once again. She stood again, taking a stance once again, announcing clearly to everyone, “What kind of hero would I be if I were to retreat now?”  
“A smart one,” Bratta answered, raising his arms once again.   
Spring again, wasted no time, charging at Bratta again. He was getting tired of the repetition of her tactics, and proceeded to remain still. Letting her come to him and intercept as needed.   
She ran full speed at him, but suddenly pivoted her foot and launched herself to the left, the sudden direction change catching Bratta off guard and just barely managing to catch sword mid swing, almost making it to his face.  
He yanked back, intending to disarm Spring again but she let go the moment he pulled back, losing balance for all but a second. A second was all that was needed.  
Spring drew her right arm back and slammed the daisy shield into his shins, flipping him forwards and landing on his face.  
Spring wasted no time and put all her weight on her shield, slamming it onto his back and demanding simply, “Surrender.”  
Class B erupted into cheers as Spring looked up, hair thoroughly disheveled but smiling like she just won a thousand dollars.  
“Oh look at that,” Bratta’s three horns glowed in unison with his eyes, “The air is glittering.”  
[Bratta Imago - Devil Moth - He is able to blast a shotgun beam of “prism blasts” that are wildly inaccurate in short bursts. His moth wings are covered in scales that come off easily when they are moved around quickly and often glitter gold in the light. His horns allow him to control where the scales congregate to, and the scales in turn. Are highly reflective.]  
In a single second, a prism blast erupted from Bratta’s eyes and bounced around as if possessed, slamming into the vanishing black glittering patches of air, and spearing into Spring’s side, launching her off of him and sending her tumbling to the ground..  
“SPRING!!!!” Nezha shouted, pushing past and running instantly to her side. She was alive of course, but her right arm was darkened and burned.   
She groaned as Nezha cradled her gingerly and cast his wrathful gaze to Bratta who was just barely getting up. “Well, as I thought, you were good! As expected when you come from the Cheng family of course but I think that was a cut above the rest if I’m being honest-”  
Aizawa’s scarf had wrapped itself around Bratta’s face and neck, yanking him back as Vlad grabbed his four arms and bent them around his back, binding them in blood.  
“I never had a good feeling about you since the start,” Aizawa growled, “Nezu should’ve never even considered accepting you as a teacher!”  
“Well you know exactly who to blame for that,” Bratta glared right at Morusai, a deep seated anger resonating heavily toward her. If it wasn’t for Aizawa cancelling out his quirk, Bratta’s eyes would’ve tried singing a hole right into her.  
Morusai, in equally rage filled demeanor marched to Bratta and slapped him across the face, the sound of which went across the field, overshadowed by Morusai screaming nearly hysterically, “Why did you do this!?”  
“I told you all. It was a lesson,” He turned his head slightly ordering, “LEO! Get off your ass and get to healing her. Try not to get any funny ideas.”  
Leo moved as ordered, kneeling down to Spring, gently telling her that he was going to have to touch her, and as gently as he could, grabbed her arm, and emitted a soft green glow. Her burned skin patched up under his touch and she relaxed in relief as the green glow pulsed outwards through her arm.  
[Leo Imago - Healing Larvae - Leo is able to heal whatever he touches with his hands. The healing gives off ripples that spread across an area, with most effectiveness being in the center of his palms. Like his father, he’s able to blast prism beams.]  
“And what’s hurting a student more than needed, supposed to teach?!” Aizawa questioned as he tightened the wrapping.  
“I’m sure you already said this Aizawa. But hero work isn’t pretty. And as I said, hero work is messy. You slack off here and you won’t be able to take on the real world and end up like poor Spring. Or worse, and unable to properly protect anybody you care about.”  
It was in that moment when a wave of shock and cold feet spread through the classes as Bratta preached on, “You’re all just green little babies with no idea what it's like to fight in a war. And I’m the drill sergeant here to forge you into heroes.”  
“We’re not training soldiers!”  
“Aren’t we Vlad? The League of Villains or the Paranormal Liberation whatever they call themselves now are still at large.” Bratta squinted at Vlad and Aizawa, “And from what information we know about them at this present moment. They still have a large mass of followers. For all intents and purposes, the world of heroes are at war with the forces of Tomura Shigaraki.”  
“We’ll you’re not going to be teaching anything anymore after this incident-”  
“Aizawa-senpai, just wait a second!”  
“Are you about to tell me not to report this to Nezu Morusai?” Aizawa turned his eye to Morusai, who refused to step back from his gaze.  
“I am not sir, but please just . . . . let me report to Nezu. I’ll take responsibility for this.”  
A moment’s standoff and Aizawa’s hair floated back down to their normal long and messy locks. “Fine. but you be sure that I’ll be there to provide additional eyewitness accounts.”  
Vlad nodded in agreement with Aizawa, and Morusai sighed in relief, content that they were giving her a small chance to talk it out.  
Bratta rattled his wings. “Lessons over, kids. Take what I said to heart. There isn’t time for any of you to be resting on your laurels, you’re gonna be put in a trial of fire. So be sure to bring more than your Plus Ultra in this day and age.”  
Kin’s face paled horribly as the realization was setting in with the rest of the class. They all knew that the Hero Course was something to be reckoned with, but some of them wondered if they had the ability to stomach what was ahead. Others relished the challenge and eagerly anticipated the thorny road that lay ahead, but Hikari was nervous. Not for his own well being of course, but for the fact that Kin would be hurt, and if she didn’t understand the risks before, she would’ve certainly have now.  
But if she did, then why did she still want to stay in the Hero Course?  
The classes went their separate ways, Vlad telling his class’s Personal Counselor, her name being Kyuubi, to take them back to the classroom as he and Aizawa took Bratta to the Faculty Housing as Morusai closed up the physical testing.  
Leo and Nezha walked off to take Spring to Recovery Girl to fix whatever Leo had missed with his own healing, with Nezha eyeballing Leo the whole time.  
Hikari didn’t really remember how far he kicked that softball, but only remembered the sad look on Morusai’s face, a sense of helplessness washing over her and the frustration that she couldn’t do anything about it.  
Once all the results were gathered, Kin had excitedly told Hikari, “Alright! I think I did pretty well, lotta items were pulled though,” She rubbed her thinning fingers and hid them into her sleeves.  
A lump seemed to form in Hikari’s throat as he ordered himself, “Don’t say anything. But he knew himself better than that. He was never the kind of person to hide his grievances, for better or worse, they always spilled out no matter what he tried to do to hide it.   
Hikari was sure that Kin would’ve scored the least, her dream would’ve ended before it could even begin, and she didn’t have what it takes to keep going, especially under the tutelage of somebody like Bratta. The bottle in the back of the Cupboard rattled as he tried to hold it down but it resisted his urgings, only shaking more as it resisted his urges.  
“Blizz? Blizz. Blizz!” Hikari snapped out of his thoughts again, to Kin pulling at his arm looking mildly miffed.  
“You alright dude? You almost look sick.”  
He certainly felt sick, but waved it off, “I’m . . fine.”  
“Pretty sure you’re not.”  
“I’m Fine.”  
Kin didn’t shrink down from his intensity, only patting his arm and offering, “If you say so. . . . just, . . you can talk to me ya know. I’ll listen-”  
“I don’t want you here.”  
“I- Eh?”  
The bottle fell out and smashed the floor, pouring it’s contents out of Hikari’s mouth, “You’re not gonna be able to make it a year in hero course, I think you should be in support class at the very least.”  
Kin was silent, which felt more painful than if she had shouted back her own issues with this.   
“Kin?” Still silent. She was still processing how to respond properly, but Hikari almost begged, “Come on, say something.”  
She took a deep breath and with the most disappointment he had ever seen on her face, calmly telling, “Blizz. I want to be here-”  
“You can’t be here.” He sparked red, suddenly upset with her lack of understanding, blowing up loudly, “You can’t handle the training, you pretty much collapsed in doing the normal physical tests, spend whatever free time you have watching and reading anime and never left your basement to do ANYTHING! You probably scored the least on the physical tests and on your way to expulsion right now!”  
Kin had shrunk in the face of unrecognizable anger, all the stress of worrying about her acclimating over the course of over six months transformed into anger and translated itself into such.   
But Kin raised herself back up to point behind Hikari.  
Morusai held the recording device that displayed all twenty student’s overall scores ranking highest to lowest. Hikari was at the top as expected of somebody who could move faster than eyes could follow, but Kin wasn’t dead last as he thought. In fact, she scored almost as high as Hikari. Ranked fourth in the class due to her use of items to boost her physical strength as high as possible.  
“And nobody’s getting expelled,” Morusai added, recalling Aizawa and Vlad explaining to her the purpose of telling them that they were going to get expelled.  
“Glad to see that you believe in me so much Blizz,” Kin spat. The damage had been done and Kin, furious with Hikari’s accusations started screaming, “I thought that you finally accepted that I’d be in hero course and there’d be nothing else! Just me and you like old times bein together!”  
“Yeah well things change when you train to be a hero! My old man told me what he had to do when he went to school and that his classmates dropped out because they couldn’t handle it-”  
“Well then I guess you really don’t think much of me if you think I won’t be able to handle it!”  
“I don’t want your dreams to be crushed like this-”  
“So you rather drop the hammer yourself!?”   
“I’m just saying you’re not at all cut out for this!!”  
“Then I guess you’re just like your dad!”  
A spark of red lightning at the mention of his hateful father, and the many times that he had heard the exact words he spewed out moments ago. Even Kin wasn't on his side any more.  
“Why you-”  
“Alright Enough!” Morusai’s wings unfolded and walled off the two of them, bringing an abrupt end to their quarrel, “The both of you are to come by to my office tomorrow before classes begin, but until then, I trust that the both of you will be able to not fight when you get there? Or am I going to need to babysit both of you?”  
Kin offered an exhausted, “No ma’am.”   
Hikari scoffed and sparked lightning, running off in a hurry, leaving the class in his dust.


	6. Episode 6 - A Game of Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hero Training finally begins! In a 5v5 battle exercise, Hikari is pitted against his best friend Kin and he's torn between wanting to protect her as much as possible and the thrill of fighting others. But either way, the Battle Training Arc BEGINS!

“If you don’t mind me asking. Why did you decide to become a hero?”  
Kin fidgeted nervously on the couch. Morusai’s office was cozy, warm colors flowing like a river across the walls, a rug floor, couches, a coffee table, her own desk cluttered with pictures and work, and an absolute plethora of cushions were everywhere casting a spell on whoever would go in to want to just gather them all into a pile and jump in.  
Morusai herself wasn’t in her usual hero costume, instead wearing a kimono with her wings folded behind her body like a giant long dress. It was early in the morning, daylight was just starting to break through and as per usual, Kin was up the entire time so she decided to come in early. Morusai did say to come to her office in the morning, and it was probably best not to disobey the teacher.  
“Ahaha,” Kin laughed nervously, “Honestly I don’t know. . . scratch that I do.”  
“To spite my old man.” Hikari declared proudly, kicking his legs up onto the coffee table, looking into Morusai’s eyes waiting for her reaction. It was the afternoon and he was just pulled out of a pretty lonely lunch. Nezha stuck around Hikari but there was a very noticeable void where Kin used to be. She had started hanging around her newfound friend, Ink, during lunch. Throughout the normal classes of the morning, Kin hadn’t looked at all in his direction.   
“He said I couldn’t be a hero the way I am right now, so I said challenge accepted and well, Voila” Hikari crossed his arms as Morusai sat very still, writing something into her notebook as she held a cup of tea in her other hands.  
“Maybe you could elaborate on that a bit?”  
Kin twisted her mouth to the side, “ehehe, well you see that's kinda . . embarrassing to say aloud.”  
“Fair enough,” Morusai put down her notepad for a minute, “It's not always easy to talk about your passions with someone you don’t know well.”  
“No No it’s not quite that sensei. It’s just . . .”  
“Not much to elaborate on, he said I couldn’t, I said screw that. So I'm here to prove him wrong” Hikari answered angrily. “Any more questions?”  
Morusai noted his expression, the spark of red lightning and his clenched fists and poured herself a second cup of tea, “A quick breather first before that, would you like some tea?”  
Hikari’s face softened instantly, taking his feet off the table, reaching for a cup.   
He sipped it gingerly as Morusai asked, “So how are you enjoying your stay at UA so far? The classes aren’t too difficult for you? Getting along with the other students?”  
“Classes aren’t hard. Everything’s been slow. Boring.”  
“I recall Aizawa telling me that you had started a fight with another student but another student stopped you both?”  
“Yep.” Hikari drank the tea in one gulp, setting it back down and asking, “He started it before I even went in. . . . So what, you’re his aunt?”  
Morusai beamed proudly, “Yes, though I’d argue I’m more of his mother at this point. His father, Bratta isn’t a very . . . good parent.”  
“He’s an asshole. And so’s Leo.”  
“Leo’s had a streak of delinquency but he’s not as bad as you might think he is. Maybe if you two sat down and talked you could get along. It’d be good for him too.”  
“Yeah, I’ll pass.”  
“But seriously tho,” Kin waved her hands around again, not knowing what else to do with them and asking, “I’m kinda scared that Bratta’s stayin around. Is he gonna pull that stuff again?”  
“No, we’ve taken measures to ensure he doesn’t do anything like that again.”  
Morusai’s thoughts drifted back to the meeting with Principal Nezu after school had ended, Aizawa and Vlad in tow.  
“I understand your feelings regarding this issue but I simply cannot afford to overlook this Morusai-san,” Nezu implored, a grim expression on his mouse face with his paws clasped together as he continued, “There must be some kind of punishment for his kind of teaching. And besides. His employment was already shaky at best.”  
“I understand this but please sir! All I’m asking for is just one more chance! I’ll take as many measures as needed to keep him from hurting any more students!" Morusai bowed her head down to a right angle with her body, almost smacking Aizawa and Vlad with her wings, “PLEASE!”  
After a minute’s silence and consideration, Aizawa pondered loudly to her, “What I don’t understand, is why you’re going to such lengths to help your brother out. He clearly doesn’t care about working here.”  
Morusai was silent, still bowing, and knowing that they were all waiting for her answer and she wasn’t sure how to properly. How to even begin scripting her answer professionally, so she decided to answer with pure honesty.  
“I just can’t abandon my brother. I was too late to help him back then, and I refused to abandon him in a time of need for something that was my own fault.”  
A stoic quiet fell over the room as Nezu pondered his choices. Morusai could feel the sweat dripping down from her head as she waited for the answer.   
“Very well. I will give him one final chance, but should he purposely injure students the way he did with Spring Cheng, he will be fired and from that point on, going back to jail to serve his time.”  
There were no words to describe the enormous sense of relief coming off her chest and the ceaseless stream of thank yous and promises that it wouldn’t happen again.   
“Speaking of Bratta-sensei, how’s the student he blasted?” Kin asked, remembering how badly burned her arm was and how worried Nezha had been since the event.  
“She’s fine. In fact, thanks to Leo she won’t have any kinds of scars and should be recovering perfectly well.” Leo hadn’t left Spring’s side in the aftermath until he was absolutely certain that she was ok. Of course, he had pleaded with her not to tell anybody.  
Kin bobbed her head in relief at the good.  
“Now if you don’t mind me moving onto the next question, which I'm afraid is the reason you’re here.” Morusai set down her tea again, “Your outburst against your friend. Now you might think this is an overreaction of sorts, after all friends have disagreements all the time, and hopefully this session is going to be one of few if any at all.”  
“Just ask the question already.” Hikari accidentally slamming down the cup against the glass table.  
“First I’d like to understand something. What’s the relationship between you and Hirakata?”  
Kin sheepishly scratched her head, “Well we’re best friends!” she said proudly, her smile dipping away as she added, “Though right now . . . I guess we hit a roadblock.”  
“Kin’s like my little sister. I’ve known her since we were kids and well I just want what’s best for her.”  
“And what do you think is best for her Hirakata?”  
“Support Class.” Hikari’s hair sparked red lightning as he raised an accusing hand at Morusai, “hey I’ve thought about this alright, Kin’s smart as hell, she’d be able to make some real good stuff-”  
“Nobody’s judging you here Hirakata,” Morusai put up her hands making sure he heard her, “ok? I'm just asking questions, and trying to help you best I can. Ok?”  
Hikari relaxed slightly, and Morusai continued cautiously. “Now you’ve said that you’d like her to be in the support course rather than the hero course. Is there any particular reasoning for this?”  
“She spent about ten years homeschooled in her basement. Never going out and in all that time she’s actually managed to make her own tech or whatever. Self taught. Once she wants to know how to do something she doesn’t exactly give up. In fact the few times she DID go out it was with family or friends.”   
“And it's because she’s spent these years in isolation that you think she can’t handle the rigorous hero course training?”  
“. . . yeah.”  
“But people train to get stronger all the time. After all, I'm sure when you started out on your vigilante side hobby with your friends, you weren’t too good at it.”  
“Side hobby-” Hikari realized Morusai had seen his record, though he should’ve expected it in hindsight. There were a few times that he was arrested for vigilante outings, though he wouldn’t actually call it a hobby. “My dad taught me how to fight, I’d already gotten into brawls with other kids. Wasn’t much of a difference. And it did more than the heroes did since I drove out more criminals faster than they did.”  
Morusai tapped her clipboard a few times remarking his views. Vigilante sentiments were on the rise in recent years. A sort of sentiment that heroes were falling behind the still rising numbers in crime following All Might’s fall among other events. But Morusai sighed, “My own feelings of vigilantism aside, the point is that everyone started from somewhere. Why is it you don’t feel like you can support Kin on this path?”  
“. . . . . look.” Hikari rested his arms on his knees, “It’s like you said. The first time I went out and fought bad guys, it wasn’t that easy. And I know how difficult it is. Kin doesn’t know how difficult it is fighting criminals and villains. It's not all, kick their ass and save the day. Sometimes you get into a tough spot and . . . . She doesn’t have the constitution to handle it.”  
“But you fought alongside your friends. What’s the difference between Sawa, and Jo that Kin doesn’t have?”  
“I’ve fought them all first hand. Sawa is brutal. Jo knows how to push back. Kin? She has dreams, lots of them. And I can’t protect her when those dreams can’t be fulfilled. And she’s idolized heroes. For a long time. All Might, Miruko, Wash, Eraserhead, hell, even you! She’s a total hero nerd and she wants to be just like you guys. Her head’s so far up in the clouds I'm just scared of what happens when it comes crashing down.”  
Morusai somberly nodded and looked at the clock. ”I see. This has been insightful-”  
“Do I need to come back for another appointment?”  
“I would recommend it. But if you still feel that you don’t need to speak to me then I suppose that you may not come. But you can come back to discuss other things on your mind if you want. I promise it remains confidential.”  
“Neat.” and he instantly went to the door, but complimenting just before he fully stepped out, “You make good tea.”  
Morusai appreciated the comment and checked back to her notes looking back to Kin’s earlier responses to her questions.  
“So like, can I come back?” she asked nervously as she hurriedly scurried to the door as to not be late for homeroom. She nervously played with her fingers as she just as hurriedly excused, “I-uhh wanna hear about your hero work and stuff ya know?”  
“You may come back and we can talk about my past work all you want.”  
“REALLY!?”  
“Of course! Anytime.” Kin skipped out of the door happily before breaking into a sprint back into the room to grab the backpack she forgot and running back out.  
The day continued, the morning starting with boring usual classes. Present Mic teaching english, loudly lecturing, “Now who can tell me what’s wrong with this sentence if there is anything wrong with it?”  
Hikari was bored out of his skull and was starting to shake his leg in silence progressively getting faster. Kin had determined the sentence was run on and needed to end earlier and split the sentences. Nezha was busy balancing a pencil on his mouth like a moustache and doodled in his jam packed notebook..  
Then lunch came along as per usual, Hikari got pulled aside for Counseling with Morusai as Nezha watched, wishing he could do something to help ease the fractured friendship between Hikari and Kin. He wanted them to get along, why must it always be so difficult?!  
Until finally, the afternoon came and the skinny form of the man known as All Might, blonde hair still frilly with two bangs poking up like rabbit ears, proclaiming loudly as he strutted in with a small basket, “AND I AM HERE! With treats for everyone to make up for how I couldn’t meet you all yesterday!”  
Everyone started shouting various claims of disbelief, awe, and such things, Kin being one of the loudest with her awe and amazement. Even after three years, All Might still had the fame he had back then if not more.   
As he snaked down the rows to hand them out, All Might asked for confirmation on their names having memorized them the morning earlier.  
“Rei Novaskoshi, here you are.”  
“You’re not my dad, call me Sueta instead.”  
“Alright then,” and went up to Kin with another sweet, “Kin Shizuma Chan?”  
Kin vibrated with excitement almost whispering to herself, “OhmygodAllMightknowsmynameandhe’sactuallytalkingtomeholyshitthisisthebestdayevercanIhaveyourautographyouprobablygethatalot-”  
“Of course I know your name! I want to know the students I will be responsible for after all. And I’d be delighted to give you an autograph young Shizuma!”  
Kin might have fainted on the spot as Toshinori turned to Hikari, who swiped himself the candy offered and tch-ed.  
“Ah. Hirakata. I’ve had the pleasure of working with your father in the past. I look forward to working with you!”  
“Whatever. Thanks for the candy old man.”  
Toshinori didn’t feel like he was that old but didn't prod Hikari any further. Though he did notice that Hikari was a bit excited judging from the sparks of lightning around him despite his brash reaction.  
“If you’re done giving candy out to the kiddies then maybe we could actually get on with today’s lesson.” Bratta came into the room, wings clipped as per usual but pink visors on his face hiding his eyes. The room’s mood dropped again as they remembered yesterday’s introduction lesson.  
“Ah Bratta! Glad to see that you could make it!”  
“What gave the impression that I wouldn’t have?”  
“Well I tried to find you during lunch to perhaps discuss lesson plans since we didn’t get the chance to do so yesterday and you didn’t respond to any texts I sent you.”  
Bratta pulled out a phone from his jacket pocket and noted the missed messages , “My bad then Toshinori. I had other things occupying my mind.”  
Despite the piss poor attitude that Bratta displayed to the other teachers, it seemed that even he wasn’t immune to the respect that was due to Toshinori, the former Symbol of Peace as All Might.   
Morusai entered behind him silently waving as Kin whisper shouted a greeting.  
“Don’t mind me, I’m chaperoning Bratta today.”  
“Chaperoning?”  
“Would babysitting be a better term brother?”  
They shared a moment of tension as Bratta glowered at her as Morusai smiled back unfazed.  
“We’re due for some battle training today right All Might-senpai?” Morusai asked politely looking past her brother.  
At the very words, battle training, Hikari perked up instantly along with the rest of the class as Toshinori proclaimed, dropping the heavy mood, “Right we are but!,” and pressed a remote aimed at the wall, that started sliding out shelves with numbers on them.  
“But no Hero is complete without a costume!” Toshinori announced energetically, positivity spreading through the room again as everyone scrambled to their feet to find their number, “Made in accordance to your Quirk Registry and request forms you filled out prior to coming to UA-”  
“Hurry up and get changed,” Bratta started moving out of the room and announced with an iota of excitement, “From now on you’re heroes in training. Look alive or you'll fall behind further than you can recover and maybe Aizawa could expel you.”  
The entire class moved to the testing site as they got changed and Hikari admired his costume come to life from a drawing he sent in with notes on what he specifically wanted. The majority of the suit was a dark blue material, his shoulders had silver plates that streamed into four discs on his torso, two on his pecs and two on his abdomen with blue glowing cores that hummed to life when Hikari moved around in them. A sort of silver neckpiece sat at the base of his neck and another silver lightning pattern ringed under his just knee.  
Around the frame of his face was a sort of brace that traveled up his sideburns and sharpened out into wings pointing behind his head. He had black iron gauntlets that stopped at his bicep, and fit comfortably into his fist. His feet had similarly designed black iron shoes that were surprisingly more comfortable than his normal shoes, and although he hadn’t run around to “break them in” so to speak, he knew that they were going to already be a one up on his normal shoes.  
He caught up with the rest of his class and saw Kin’s own hero costume. It looked more like a super fancy hoodie than anything else. Kin’s shoulders had symmetrical yellow patches that lead into yellow cyber lines running down her arms screens the size of her forearms on those forearms. Black lines were running down the costume’s white center separated out by three purple sections and white with black lines filling in those spaces, and the final patch of white in the purple being her hoodie pouch that had an “on button” symbol on the center of the pouch.   
Her pants looked to be simple blue jeans that she really seemed to enjoy sitting in. But there was a white headphone piece that had a green wifi symbol with an antenna that stuck out dimly that caught his attention.  
Her costume for how it looked so casual had a subtle vibe of approachability due to its simplicity. He wanted to tell her that it looked awesome but she was busy talking with Inku about her own costume which was a sleeveless and short dress that revealed about five different tattoos of dragons on her body.  
“You should try talking to her,” Nezha cozied up beside Hikari, shifting his costume around some. Nezha had a red flower on the center of a gray and black mesh on his chest and red leathery armor on his stomach, red and gold small pauldrons on his shoulders and sleeves that transitioned into a soft pink up to his wrists. His thighs had a sort of blue teal sleeve that lead into his mechanical legs, which were plated with a red kneecaps that turned into a bright orange by the time the calf plates ended and turned into stark white feet with what looked like small boosters at his heels and orange pads at his achilles tendon and under feet. There were some other attachments on the legs, what looked to be two poles sticking out of his heel and two halves of a hoop out from his calves. Though of course, Nezha still had his signature white hair buns and long hair.   
“Silence doesn’t fix much ya know.”  
“And you should try tying up your hair before it gets caught on something.”  
“And not let everyone admire it?” he joked as he clicked his feet on the floor, testing out the feel of his legs.   
Hikari turned to the rest of his class, seeing a myriad of colorful clothes and wondered if any of them would be able to hold up to his expectations.  
“All Might-sensei, considering our current environment,” the white mohawk form of Sato Seiken spoke up, dressed in what looked like a sci fi martial artist’s gi and a solid gray visor hiding his eyes, “Are we to be conducting more battles against those robots from the earlier exams?”  
“Nope! We’re moving on from fighting villains outdoors to Indoor Anti-personnel Battle Training!” Toshinori explained further to the listening audience, “Villain attacks, while they happen outdoors often, most of the actual battles will take place indoors out of public viewing!”  
“The smartest villains don’t do their dirty work in easily accessible locations outside,” Bratta piped up, four arms crossed together, “If they did then I wouldn’t have had to go undercover on multiple occasions.”  
“You went undercover? How’d you manage that with your wings and all that?”  
“Lots of lies and coverups. And the ability to do this doesn’t hurt,” Bratta’s horns glowed and the yellow and red lightning streaks on his moth wings shifted, forming into a great big yellow wing with black eyes and red irises before reverting back. “Point is, you’re gonna want to know how to fight indoors in unfavorable conditions.”  
“No basic training first?”  
“What’d I say the first time? I’m putting you through a trial of fire, throwing you to the wolves so to speak.”  
“And practical experience beats basic training too.”  
“Sure. And besides,” his goggles flashed as he glared across everyone, eyes lingering on a select few, “Your opponents not being robots this time but your own actual flesh and blood classmates, you need to be able to learn moderation.”  
“How are we determining the victor?”  
“How do we separate into teams? Can we pick our own teams?”  
“Can we hurry up and get started so I can fight everyone?”  
“Dad why are you still working here if you hate it so much?”  
“Can I blow everything up?”  
“Everyone, I promise we’ll get to your questions if you let us finish explaining!”  
“And to answer that question Leo, I’m still here because I find the prospect of pitting you kids against each other in gladiatorial-esque combat as opposed to sitting in a jail cell a lot more enticing. And since I teach well enough to get a license. Might as well use it.”  
“Here’s the game!” Toshinori flipped out a piece of paper again with the rules of the same starting game as the previous two years of teaching, “Villains will be hiding a nuclear weapon in their base that the heroes must go to and deactivate under a limited time crunch! Villains must at that point capture all heroes or hold out until time is up.”  
“How do we separate into teams?”  
“Drawing balls.”  
“Toshi, I’m gonna cut in for a sec,” Bratta pushed down the slip of paper that Toshinori had and raised his wings for attention, “Do you mind if I alter the lesson a little?”  
“Oh- Well that depends-”  
“Right then,” Bratta clapped his hands together excitedly with a sadistic glee that set off nerves, “What I am going to propose is an altered version of the game. Ordinarily it’s in teams of two, two villains, two villains, one and done. But I’m changing it up to teams of five and throwing in a traitor to the mix.”  
The class went into a sudden buzz of confusion but Bratta kept going, not caring about their questions. “Every game will have one traitor on either team of Hero or Villain to help their true team by reporting information back to them or vice versa. However, if that person is found then the team that they’re embedded in will gain extra credit for capturing that person. You’ll know if you’re a traitor if the ball you picked up is marked with something extra, and aside from that little extra tidbit, there’s not much else different. Objective remains the same, but now you’ll need to watch out for your own backs in case one of your own isn’t who you think they are.”  
“How’s the traitor going to communicate with the other team?”  
“They’ll get a special communicator that allows them to talk to the other team. Indistinguishable from other earpieces so you can’t cheat. Is it alright with you if we continue with my variation All Might?”  
Toshinori put a hand on his chin thinking about it. He didn’t exactly like the implications from Bratta’s lesson but he should lend him some credibility beyond that there wasn’t much else. After all, the lesson really wasn’t changing that dramatically.  
“I am,” he concluded, “We’ll proceed with your variation but for future reference, please discuss this with me before the actual lesson.”  
“Well even if you were going to refuse I already took out most of the balls. There’s only four groups of balls.” The class came to the realization that the smile and surprising good mood that he had on his face was really just Bratta forward to watching what was going to unfold.  
“What’s the lesson we’re supposed to take away from all this?” Kin quietly asked, her voice barely being heard above the murmuring of her classmates.  
“That we won’t be able to trust our allies.” The void haired student said, looking directly at Kin, who almost shrunk from her cold gaze, “Hero work would be much more difficult without allies on the inside of criminal organizations. We can only do so much if we’re the ones looking in, you learn the art of espionage. And villains can do the same to us as heroes. It boils down to what motivates people in the end that drives them as a hero or villain. And even the purest of intentions can be turned on its head.”  
“What she said. You get extra credit Akuno.” Bratta gestured to the boxes set before them, “But you all know anyways, that in this day and age. A line between heroes and villains is starting to blur. So it’s healthy to make sure that nobody’s holding a knife to your back.”  
And so the sorting was underway and the teams that came out were the following teams.  
Team A was Kioshi Akuno, Krimm Hikaru, Kumicho Tsugihara, Kin Shizuma Chan, and Kirose Kyuoko.  
Team B was Ozaki and Miki Koji, Rell Saeke, Autumn Wind, and Sato Seiken.  
Team C consisted of Hikari, Nezha, Leo Imago, Shuzo Fujimoto, and Sueta Novaskoshi.  
And finally, Team D had Akoto Kurusu, Inkou Seikats, Gordon Koji, Miruku Suzuke, and Miyu Hinoki.  
“Congrats, now that teams have been selected, time to decide who’s going first. Toshi if you would?”  
Toshinori grabbed from two boxes and pulled out two balls labelled A and C.  
Hikari and Kin locked eyes instantly, both of them filled with terrible realization of battling each other.   
“Both teams will have five minutes of preparation time, so get out there and start setting up.”  
And so they went their separate ways and found themselves sitting across a building, five stories high and with layers of orange bricks making up the walls. From it there was the faint noise of building and installing, maybe a drill somewhere in there? Something was certainly being put up, hell there might’ve even been an explosion or something but it was muffled by the complex itself.  
Hikari stared down the building almost like he was trying to will it out of existence to no obvious avail.  
“Well! Guys, I think we should start coming up with plans?” Nezha tried, clapping his hands together for attention. “How’s about we start going around and introducing our quirks and names first?”  
“Nope.” Sueta’s starfire blue hair flared up as she stared down Nezha with blue and white eyes. “I’m not telling any of you guys anything.”  
Sueta’s hero costume consisted of a single blue tight suit and a white battle vest that protected her torso with a star emblem on the center, blue ball earrings, and white pointed shoes.   
“One of you guys could be the spy and leak all that info to the other team and I’m not failing like that. If you want a plan, I nuke the room and we go in and pick off stragglers.”  
“How about no?” Nezha pointed his clasped hands at her and turned to everyone else, “Well any other ideas if we’re not sharing names or whatnot?”  
“I throw in gas pellets and gas em out,” Shuzo suggested. His face was entirely covered, one half covered by the metal mask he wore and his eyes covered by a visor resembling a flat flower that curved up into his black hair. He had a short cape covering his body and hid a strap of gadgets that went across his chest. “They don’t come out then they’re either asleep or planned for it.”  
“Oh that’s a good one! But we’ll need some more, Leo?”  
Leo had similar pink goggles as his dad did and just stared off at the building. His costume had shoulders of brown fur and a jacket that cascaded into a coat single wide coat tail behind him with short sleeves on his arm. His legs had red and gold armor on his thighs, knees, and shins much like Morusai and Bratta’s own costumes. Clearly whoever made their costumes also made his seeing as how the armor similarities were present among the family.  
“Hm? Sorry I didn’t catch that, what happened?”  
“Clearly not listening alright! What about you Hikari?”  
Hikari was still staring at the doorway and answered, “You all stay out here. I run in. I find the weapon. Tap it. Game over, nobody’s hurt.”  
“Dangerous so not gonna be our first plan!”  
“What’s dangerous about it?”  
“Well you’re running in alone.”  
“I can move fast enough to where they can’t get me.”  
“Except you don’t know what they can do? Maybe they figured out a way to slow you down! If we’re going inside we’re doing it as a team, no splitting up or anything like that.”  
“Less chances of us getting picked off at least,” Shuzo admitted.  
“See?! There we go! But we should determine who is in the lead then if we’re all grouping in.”  
“I still say that I could nuke it.”  
“And risk killing everyone, please do continue on about your plan to somehow explode the building.”  
“Well I can’t exactly do moderation.”  
“Then we’ll figure something out, and maybe if you told us your quirk-”  
“Still a hard no manlet.”  
“Who’re you calling manlet?”  
“Five minutes up.”  
“Im sorry, what was that Hikari?”  
Hikari didn’t answer as he instantly ran into the building, kicking open the door to find that the interior was completely pitch black, all the light sources inside were taken out from what he could gather in flashes of light from his lightning.   
Then he ran forward some in his quest to find the objective and end the game sooner so Kin wouldn’t get hurt, but the entire hall careened into his face as something jerked in the way of his foot.  
He slammed into the ground painfully, knocked out of superspeed and now almost completely blinded in pitch blackness. He got his head up when he heard the sound of something metal dropping on the floor, followed with a sudden flash of light and his ears proceeded to be hit with a deafening blast.  
He felt himself getting dragged back the way he came in, kicking around and blinded until he was deposited on the ground with Nezha’s voice starting to come through the ringing, “hey! You ok? Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding?!”  
Hikari blinked away his blindness, getting back up shaking his head and groaning disoriented.  
Shuzo stood in the doorway looking down the hall and reported back, “Looks like they booby trapped the hallway.”  
“That's why I said not to rush in without a plan-”  
“More evidence lending itself to my idea.”  
“Sueta-”  
“I’m goin again.”  
“Hikari!?”  
A sudden screeching noise rang out from Leo, standing in the doorway peering down the hall as he pulsed a purple beam from his eyes down the hall. “I wouldn’t. Looks like there’s still more traps down the way. Tripwires on the floor and walls and probably more I couldn’t see. How’d they get flashbangs?”  
“Kin probably. I’ll just-”  
Nezha grabbed Hikari on his shoulders and forced him back down from him starting to get up, shouting loudly, “EVERYBODY JUST LISTEN FOR TWO SECONDS PLEASE!”  
Everyone jerked to Nezha’s direction as he just shouted with what little patience he had left, “We need to WORK TOGETHER in order to win this game and get a good grade, and if we’re not gonna get along then fine, but if you won’t at least try to cooperate, then I guess we’re gonna fail it without even trying our best! Sueta, quit bringing up your wanting to destroy the building, Hikari, quit tryin to do things on your own, Leo pay some attention, and Shuzo- You’re actually not too bad.”  
“Ditto.”  
Everyone quietly watched Nezha’s shoulders sagged, grumbling, “Now then. Let’s try one more time, and let’s actually play the part of heroes instead of a group of idiot hobos. I’m Nezha. My quirk is that I can make myself frictionless and so can go really fast if circumstances are met.”  
Hikari stood up, wiped off the dust and cracked his neck following Nezha’s lead. He wasn’t sure what he’d do when he found Kin but just hoped that for the moment she’d stay out of the battle, like a guy in the chair situation, but for now he introduced gruffly, “Hikari. I’m fast, keep water away from me and we’ll be great.”  
Shuzo and Leo exchanged glances. Shuzo walked back to the group, taking off the upper half of his face mask, revealing soft toxic green eyes ringed with black makeup on his eyebrows, “Shuzo Fujimoto. I breathe toxic gas that can kill you, and it’s explosive.”   
Upon seeing everyone’s eyes going wide he quickly added nonchalantly, “It does it slowly, but it paralyzes you first. It’ll take you five hours to actually kill you and you’ll be able to see it.”  
“Is that why you have that mask?”  
“Yep. so I don’t accidentally paralyze anybody just by breathing. I got gas pellets filled with my breath that’re safe to be used. If I’m not constantly putting out a supply the gas dissipates in like, let’s say fifteen minutes? And the explosive bit . . . well it’s kinda self explanatory.”  
Leo cleared his throat, propping his goggles on his forehead as he looked at everyone with similar scarlet eyes as Bratta, “so. I’m Leo. I shoot lasers and can . . . fix things.”  
“Healing? Like what you did with Spring?”  
“Yeah but I can also do . . this,” Leo grabbed a small rock from the sidewalk and proceeded to smash it onto a metal rail right next to the street. He held it there and it glowed with a soft gold glow from his hands, to pull back and reveal that the metal and rock were fused together into a rail with a stone lump on it’s side.  
“Alright, not sure about how we are going to utilize that but for now, you’re the healer.”  
Leo looked soured at being regaled to “healer” status but everyone collectively looked at Sueta, who glared back annoyed at Nezha’s outburst.  
She stuck up a finger and a ball of blue leached out from it, for a moment becoming a fireball but then condensing itself into a solid small blue ball the size of a button. “I can make stars. And explode them.”  
“. . . . any other details?”  
“no.”  
“Great! Better than nothing-”  
“Holdon!” Leo whisper shouted, clutching his earpiece. After a moment of listening intently on his comms, he excitedly said, “Yo guys the spy’s on our side!”  
“Are they now? Who is it?”  
“They said, ‘I don’t have time or space to communicate properly, the building is booby trapped and completely pitch black inside.’ and also that there’s cameras set up throughout the building to watch who’s where and whatever, and-”  
“Jesus how many traps did they set up?”  
“A lot. Mostly to defend against him from running in and blitzing,” Leo nodded to Hikari who felt weirdly proud that there were so many measures against him alone.   
“I’m not sure if its safe for us to try and talk back if it’ll compromise their position,” Nezha said thoughtfully, his energetic and carefree demeanor slowly slipping down, “Tell them that we’re going to be going in soon and that if at all possible to make contact with us.”  
Leo relayed the message into the earpiece and Nezha finally came up with a proper plan for everyone.  
Nezha would be in the front and leading them inside and watching for traps with Hikari in the back watching their rear guard. With his lightning speed, if he needed to fight he’d easily zip to where he was needed and fight as per usual. Shuzo would be in the center, throwing gas pellets into the rooms they passed through to smoke out the enemy team and Sueta would provide lighting while Leo scanned around looking for anything that was missed by anyone else.  
“I should be in front,” Hikari complained, clacking his ironclad fingers.  
“Doesn’t make much difference with your speed,” Nezha retorted, pulling out the half circles from the back of his calves and extended them into two bladed hoops.   
With their line order established, they prepared for their entry into the hideout three minutes later than they were supposed to start.  
Five tennis sized fireballs hovered over them lighting up the entire hallway they stood in, revealing it to be empty for the most part and four more tripwires along the walls and floor. They planned against even Hikari running on the walls.  
Nezha stepped over them carefully while brandishing his twin chakrams with Hikari haphazardly watching their footsteps as Shuzo lobbed smoke balls into the first two rooms.   
As they progressed they made it up to a second floor, they found no resistance still and carried on still slowly as before.  
The tension was palpable, all of them awaiting something to come out of the darkness and attack them, but that attack never came. Hikari could swear he felt someone staring directly at him as they walked but no matter how much he tried lighting up the area a bit, he never found anyone.  
They did however find some cameras in the halls that they dismantled with ease along with most of the traps they came across. Most of which were simple tripwires. Hit the wire, the wire pulls the pins off of flashbangs and whatnot, others were a bit more creative. A pitfall that dropped down about ten feet, a pressure plate that activated blow darts with what was presumably a sleeping drug. How they found time to put so many up so expertly was puzzling. A lot of the traps lead into other traps that Nezha had to waste time fixing or just straight up skipping over because of how long it took.  
They came across a stairway up leading into more pitch black and at this point, Sueta was kinda sick of the slow process. The entire time that they moved she whined about wanting to destroy everything much to Nezha’s annoyance.  
“Should we have tried scanning around the first floor a little longer? Maybe smoke out any remaining rooms?” Shuzo asked, sensing the growing animosity from Nezha towards Sueta’s hundredth complaint about the inability to see anything.  
“Shouldn’t risk it,” Nezha responded as he started up the stairs, eager to escape the complaints and whining. “If they were on the floor then they would’ve attacked already.”  
“Unless they’re planning to ambush us somewhere else.” Hikari couldn’t shake the feeling of that stare even after they made it through the first floor.  
“Obviously they are. We’re just gonna need to be extra careful. Leo, any response fro-” and halted his sentence as he felt the temperature in the hallway suddenly drop rapidly and the floor beneath them quake.  
“MOVE!” Hikari started sparking lightning just in time to see the ground split apart in a shower of ice and debris as Kirose came crashing up having punched her way through the floor right in the middle of the line, in front of Hikari.  
From the bright blue light of the five around the team, her dark blue ponytail shined as it coiled from her head like a snake as she righted herself in the air, moving seamlessly in her sleeveless one piece that exposed her feet and heel, her short sleeveless gi a star white amongst her all dark blue outfit.  
She kicked the wall, freezing a solid foothold into the wall and pivoted her body, swinging her other foot downwards toward the back of the group, sending out an avalanche of ice into Hikari’s face as she melted her foothold on the wall to swing back around, sending an ice ram down the hall, further dividing their team.  
“Guys!” Hikari managed to shout as he was knocked back into Leo by the ice wall noticing that the little star above his head waned for a second before blinking out in a poof of stardust.   
The instant it died he was pulled by his collar and thrown into an adjacent room, being pulled faster than he could react and finding himself nearly flying out a window.  
For a brief second he was blinded by the sudden sunlight outside before jerking up against gravity and he was thrown through yet another window.  
He tumbled onto his knees as he looked up frantically just in time to clap his hands together to catch a knife inches away from his clavicle. The face of his assailant formed from the shadows, mere inches from his own face with a cold determination in her eyes. Kioshi Akuno had revealed herself.  
She wore a simple purple mask that covered the upper half of her face and revealed it in stark contrast with the pitch black of her eyes and white pupils as she put her weight into the knife caught between Hikari’s hands.  
Hikari quickly turned her knife aside and rolled out of the way, lightning sparking all around him instantly but found that she had vanished into the darkness as if he had just hallucinated almost getting stabbed.  
“Are you allowed to have that?” He called out tauntingly, eyes straining to look into the darkness, “Heroes aren’t usually armed with such weapons-”  
“Snipe has a gun, Morusai and Bratta have scythes. What difference does it make if I happen to have knives?” her voice rang out and sounded hauntingly familiar but Hikari couldn’t place where he heard it from. Her voice came from all around him annoyingly enough. If Hikari had to guess, he’d say her quirk was one of the more annoying ones where he couldn’t touch her.   
“Fair enough. But you better know what you’re doing using a knife like that. Coulda accidentally slit my throat.”  
“I’m more than confident in my own knife skills,” Arms came out from behind Hikari’s head and wrapped around his neck, putting him into a chokehold as she piggy back rode him.  
He rolled forward aiming to slam the person on his back against the ground but only succeeded in slamming himself to the ground as the arms vanished and Kioshi reappeared above him, almost as if materializing out from the shadows around him as she stabbed the knife down at his shoulder.  
[Kioshi Akuno - Quirk: Shadowman - She’s able to turn her entire body into an intangible shadow. While a shadow she’s able to move faster depending on the level of light there is in the area]  
He dodged instantly, the blade jamming into the ground as he grabbed her arm and in a blur swept his feet around to knock her off balance but she vanished just as quickly, leaving the knife behind.  
Hikari got up sparking lightning, feeling the adrenaline pumping and the thrill of this confrontation. He felt a grin crawl across his face as he looked around in a frenzy. Finally. Things were speeding up.  
Meanwhile on the floor below, Nezha groggily got up disoriented from what transpired mere seconds ago and looked around.  
The sun above his head was winking out and Sueta’s lower half seemed to have been stuck in ice as was face planted on the ground, fire hair still lighting up the room and seemingly unconscious.  
“Ah cra- Sueta?” She groaned lightly much to Nezha’s relief but then turned quickly, hearing a shift as something hit the ground.  
Out from the shadows and into the dim torchlight of Sueta’s hair and still floating fireballs came Kumicho in her hero costume, on all six of her spindly arms, two of which threateningly held aloft white capture tape as she shouted, “Sorry please hold still!”  
“No thank you!” Nezha kicked off of a piece of ice jutting out from the wall behind him and dodged out of the way of her charge. Kumicho didn’t crash into the wall, rather instead skidded to a stop at an angle up against the wall.   
Nezha could see her costume more clearly, and tilted his head slightly. She had something like a short light blue jacket with incredibly long sleeves down one pair of her arms that ended right at her abdomen but had another sort of light blue corset buttoned around her stomach that led into a red trench coat around her backside as she put her legs in a runner’s position. Her face no longer had glasses but instead wore a mask that covered the upper half of her face, revealing two big orange and yellow eyes that were accompanied by six more eyes directly above the two main ones.  
[Kumicho Tsugihara - Quirk: Tarantula - She has six long arms covered in tiny hairs that sense movement in the air, with claws that she can climb with, and something like a paralyzing venom out of her mouth’s fangs. She can open her mouth twice as wide as anyone else, though she doesn’t like doing so cause it usually freaks people out. Also makes webs from her mouth.]  
An arm suddenly shot past his shoulders and began to choke him out from the shadows despite having his back to the wall.  
A monotone voice asked as he put pressure on Nezha’s windpipe, “Go to sleep, we’d rather not hurt you too badly.”  
“Sorry- But- I- Can’t- Comply!” The back of Nezha’s feet suddenly exploded as a jet, sending them up over his own head, landing flat against the wall, sliding his head right out from the chokehold with help from his quirk and grabbing his assailant’s arm instead, throwing him outwards with all his strength and sending him stumbling forwards.  
He fell back down to his feet, grabbing the half hoops on the back of his calves and the moment that he took a stance, they transformed into full ringed blades though with a blunted edge. He didn’t wanna hurt them too bad after all.  
The person before him dimly lit from Sueta’s hair and fireball wasn’t Kioshi despite the shadow quirk. His frame was looking just as similar to her’s, hair the same black void, and eyes the same black and white dotted iris, but the hair style along with the costume that he saw her in earlier was wrong.  
He wore a black short sleeved one piece with purple abdomen armor, and had a sort of centerpiece that had four belts going over his clavicle and under his armpits with containers riddled along them. His face mask was a simple white and black lined wraparound that revealed his eyes easily enough. He had a gray undersleeve that went all the way up to his wrists and black pants with white outlines where his pockets were as he stood up, still expressionless despite his tumble.  
“Krimm, you alright?!”  
“Yes. Focus up or you’ll get hurt.”  
[Krimm Hikaru - Quirk: Complete Copy - Depending on how much DNA of someone he ingests, he is able to mimic people’s appearances to a certain extent as well as their quirks. That’s why he always asks for people’s hair!]  
“Right! Sorry!” Kumicho reaffirmed herself, all eight eyes laser focused on Nezha again as he prepared his chakrums. Taking two on one’s piece of cake, he did it all the time back at home for training! Though the hallway was a bit too tight for his liking. And these two had quite the weird set of quirks.  
He ran toward them, immediately going frictionless and in a blur of motion, threw his chakrums at Krimm, who melted into shadows just before impact.   
Kumicho skittered forwards, claws pulled back into a fist, throwing it at Nezha’s face, who took it without hesitation, though it just slid off his face.  
He arched back with the blow, but smoothly rolled with the attack, hands reaching up in a blur to grab her arm and yank her forwards.  
She fell as Nezha released his grip and kicked Kumicho square in the chest, knocking the wind out of her as the Chakrums smashed into the wall and bounced around then back to his hands.   
She fell back as he proceeded to quickly move to use the capture tape on her, but was suddenly punched across his jaw, and dragged down the hallway by his foot.   
He activated his rocket feet once again, ripping his foot out of Krimm’s grip and swinging it back around the floor, brightly sparking across the ground. He couldn’t see where Krimm came from and for someone who copied a quirk, he was already using it pretty well. Attacking and vanishing from sight in the more or less same instant.  
But the issue, Krimm wasn’t a real good fighter, and Nezha, not to toot his own horn, was.  
He swung himself back to his feet in a blur and instinctively dodged to the right as he threw up his chakrum and letting Krimm’s arm wizz in as he tried to punch him from behind.  
He yanked down on the arm, kicking out his leg from behind him and slammed him to the ground and maneuvered his legs around his arm and neck, straightening out his arm as he pleaded politely, “Gotosleep Gotosleep Gotosleep!”  
Krimm melted away to shadow instantly as a volley of webs latched onto his chest and yanked him headfirst toward Kumicho, whose mouth was slit much wider than what a normal person’s mouth could go, split down the middle jaw and spitting out more web as her other arms reach around, grabbing a handful of webbing with one pair as the other pair started yanking him back toward her.  
Well that’s unfavorable. The webbing was stiffer than expected, glueing his hands to his chest and he couldn’t get his chakrams in a position to cut the webs.   
He could however, still move his legs. He slammed his feet against the floor, cracking the concrete ground and momentarily slowing his advancement for a second.  
The gears in his knees spun up, forcing him off the ground higher than he would be able to do normally but was pulled into Kumicho’s direction harder than predicted since she yanked hard in an attempt to lurch Nezha into arms reach.  
Nezha flew towards her, flying through the air like a beautiful missile crashing into her stomach and knocking her back, but she steadied herself with her legs.  
In a split second before she could react, Nezha had pulled back his foot and swung himself back to swipe his foot at her stomach, knocking her away again.   
She recoiled heavily but maintained her posture despite the blistering blunt force, in fact reacting fast enough to cover his leg in webbing, then forcing it to the ground, webbing the rest of it to the ground.  
With a quick twist of his thigh, the booster on the back of his heel flared to life, tearing through the webbing easily and quickly becoming a spinning flurry of metal and heat, quirk making him completely frictionless as he spun on his head, vibrating his arms back and forth with quickening fevor until the glue and webbing came apart in a spinning display of chaos.  
He slammed his rings into the ground with enough force to launch himself upwards into the air and throw them directly at Kumicho while still upside down.  
Her arms moved with blinding speed, passing from her face to the chakrums and slapping them to the side where they hit the wall covered in spit and glue.  
Keeping his previous momentum spinning, he barely touched his toes to the low ceiling before kicking off and angling himself just right to then go torpedoing right into Kumicho one more time.  
He slammed her shoulders and finally slammed her to the ground, then smoothly leaping off without putting much more pressure on her face as to hopefully not break something.  
As he leapt back into the air, he passed his hands over his calves again, smacking a button that launched two poles out from the back of his calves.  
They jettisoned out to which Nezha caught them in the same motion, twisting midair as he put the two ends together, locking in place to become a spear as he poised and aimed it.  
Just as he began to hit the apex of his flight and falling back down, he threw the spear with expert precision, nailing the collar of where the neck and shoulder met, much to Kumicho’s terror.  
“Holy shit!”  
“Sorry!” he landed back down without a fuss and immediately upon landing, swept his legs out behind him, tripping up Krimm who had tried materializing behind him to catch him on the landing.  
Nezha moved once again in a fast blur, from his low stance of sweeping Krimm’s leg to back upright, rearing back another fist to slam Krimm into the ground to knock him out, but his fist met shadow and the hard floor.  
He didn’t so much as flinch as his knuckles scraped the floor from his speed. He only raised his other hand past his face and caught Krimm’s fist right before it made contact almost effortlessly.  
“You’re getting faster at this,” Nezha complimented as he grabbed Krimm from his armpit and threw him onto his back, much harder than last time.  
His back slammed the floor but he didn’t yell in pain, but looked mildly discomforted from all the throwing around.   
“But you’re a bit too predictable. Good try though!” as Nezha started taking out the capture tape.   
And then that’s when Nezha noticed it. The area was lit up? It wasn’t near pitch black anymore. If anything it was getting brighter. And Krimm noticed it too, looking at his hand in confusion as the dark wispy shadows burned away and his own skin started turning redder with the increasing light.  
Nezha, Krimm and Kumicho turned their heads to the light source, which was a very frustrated and angry looking Sueta with a plume of blue fire erupting from her head bordering on white.  
The ice around her started melting as she raised a hand that wasn’t trapped in ice, growling, “Alright, THAT’S IT!” before the rest of her body burst into a blinding white explosion.  
Outside, the walls entire building shook from the power of the nova explosion, an entire section of the building erupted outwards.  
Kin sitting in a pitch black room with a laptop with several displays on it watching the different rooms and skipping back and forth at inhuman speeds when the entire building shook, almost making her fall back.  
She quickly reached up to her comms in her ear, “Hey, what the hell’s happening?! I just lost like ten cameras, did someone hit a gas tank or something?!”  
“It would seem that the first plan failed. Sueta is still in play, Prepare emergency measures.”  
“Hold up, Kioshi what abou-”  
“I don’t have time for questions, I'm in the middle of handling Hikari. Assume Krimm and Kumicho are out until we’re proven otherwise and adjust accordingly.”  
Kin was going to say something back but faltered before the words left her mouth. “Y- Yeah. Fine, Adjusting plan. Over and Out.”  
Kin rapidly switched through the monitors until she found the one with Hikari and Kioshi as the questions that Morusai asked her the week prior floated back.  
“Why do you want to be a hero?”


End file.
